One Million Ways to Survive the Fifteenth Year
by Banana Smoothie
Summary: "She's weird," she told her brother in a whisper that anyone could have heard. She shouldn't have acted so surprised when I answered. "Even us half-bloods who chase monsters in our free time and have super powers have standards."  NicoxOC
1. The Life of Beautiful People

**Why, hello, hello! So, Favors of Shadow has ended (for new readers, check it out. Although, I must admit, I tend to be more on the confusing side and some chapters are wayyyyy better than others). But, no worries! You still have Nico, after all! And Nico is the bomb. For reals.**

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_**The Life of Beautiful People

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**_Chapter One_**

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I cannot even begin to relay to you the completeness of my misery, for it is so great it cannot be relayed through a computer screen. Yeah, I know. You would not believe how the mighty, for mighty I am, have fallen. Beautiful people did not go to school.

And I, Nico di Angelo, am a beautiful person.

Not that anyone cares. "Go to school," says Annabeth. "Get an education." In case you couldn't tell, that was, mentally, done in my best Annabeth impression. Heroes don't need an education. We don't _need _to know geometry. We need to know how to make a kabob out of big, furry/scaly/slimy/smelly monsters and not get chopped up into little pieces while we do it. I don't care what she says, she can't force me to care about math. Numbers aren't going to come alive if I don't figure out a problem and try to skewer me with their horns. Or eat me. Or behead me.

And who would want me beheaded? Actually, don't answer that. The list would be a long one. But, my point is, I like to think my head is my best feature. Mostly because it's connected to the rest of me. And since I'm so roguishly handsome, anything connected to me is awesome. Including my head.

Not that monsters care about that. They care about that almost as much as Annabeth cares that beautiful people don't go to school. And that would be roughly the equivalent of not at all.

"Stop being a wimp," she said, shoving my pitiful bag into the back of the giant _Delphi Strawberries_ van that could have a double life at one of those big white ones you kidnap people in. "This is a _good_ thing. School is wonderful. You'll love it."

...

Since when has any demigod (who isn't a daughter of Athena) enjoyed school? Or any person, for that matter? It was ridiculous.

I looked at Percy for help. I could have charmed myself out of this one, of course, but Percy was her boyfriend. And charming people is a lot of work.

Of course, since Percy doesn't care about beautiful people either, he just shrugged and gave me a raspberry jellybean. "It's easier just to agree with her," he admitted, shoveling a handful into his mouth and talking through it as only a teenage boy could. "She usually ends up being right anyway."

"You disappoint me, cousin."

"You can say that. But I more or less saved the world five times." He grinned, his tongue the same blue as the beans in the little bag he had shoved in the pocket of his pants.

"I helped!" I insisted. I was distressed. And while my roguish handsomeness can pull that off, I prefer being apathetic in the dark corner of my cabin. "For, like, the last two times."

He patted me sympathetically on the shoulder with his jellybean covered hand.

I tried my hardest to glare a hole into it.

I did not succeed.

So, as I eased myself on to the pleather seats in the van, I was not in the best mood. The fact that I hit my head as I did it didn't really help my outlook. Some day, I would write a book about how stupid it is to send beautiful people to school, just to help my fellow man. It will be a best seller, and then I can shove it in a certain blond half-bloods face. That would show her.

While I sat in the passengers seat, I was too busy plotting that I didn't notice the girl knocking on my window. When I did notice, all I saw was blond, so I rolled down my window and gave Annabeth (supposedly) a witty remark. "Buzz off."

However, it wasn't Annabeth, as I realized when whoever it was whacked me hard on the forehead like you see in those V-8 commercials. Oh no! My roguishness! I scowled indignantly, but they didn't care. "You're in my seat, moron."

"Obviously it isn't, because I'm sitting in it, so go shove yourself in a corner and be gone from my presence. I understand that it's hard for you to pull away from staring at me, but please do your best and leave me alone." And thus I returned to my plotting.

The girl was not happy. I could hear her foot tapping on the gravel. "Look, idiot. We're both in the same boat, and I can understand that. But sharing the same van with someone like you irks me. So make this as easy for the two of us as possible and get in the back where I don't have to spend the entire trip staring at the back of your head."

I narrowed my eyes at her. "I don't see what's so bad about it. Alright, it's not as awesome as the front of my head, but it's still not an eyesore. Besides, I don't like you either. So why don't you just accept fate and sit in the back where you can read your books or whatever and leave me in peace?"

Storm gray eyes glared at me like flint. Wow, a simile. See, I didn't need to go to school in the first place.

But the girl, whoever she was, huffed and, tossing her blond hair over her shoulder, opened the back door of the van and hopped inside (without hitting her head, I noted.)

Argus settled into the drivers seat, and I swear he would have been smirking is his facial expression wasn't hidden by his collection of blue eyes.

The girl patted her bangs into place stiffly and pulled a book the size of my handsome head out of a bulky backpack that had so much stuff in it, the seams looked like they were halfway to splitting. "You're backpack needs to go on a diet," I told her.

She looked at me and decided I was simply too awesome to reply to, so she saved whatever remark she had for another day. And believe me, there would be plenty of them. Because, as she glared, something dawned on me. She was in the van. Going to school. My soon-to-be school. The one that I would be occupying for the next year assuming I didn't get kicked out. Oh no. This was not going to work.

"You're going to Avery?" I asked, horrified.

She grinned, showing perfect white teeth as she flipped another page in her well-worn book. "Took you long enough."

"This is bad."

"Tell me about it." Then she ignored me and went back to her book. I didn't both translating the title from whatever my dyslexia converted it to. It was big and thick and something I would never, ever touch in my entire life. I avoided knowledge like the plague.

So, really, going to school was a great idea! Hopefully, you picked up on my dripping sarcasm. If not, you need to go to school way more than I do.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Hmmm?" she said, barely glancing up from her head-sized novel.

"You're name. What do people call you? Ogre?"

She threw a pencil as my head.

"Tess," she muttered a minute later.

"Huh?"

"Tess," she scowled. "My name is Tess."

"I assume you already know my name, considering that I helped save the world twice." I smirked.

"I heard that conversation." Tess rolled her eyes. "Sorry to disappoint, but I don't really pay attention to idiots. So no, I don't know your name. Enlighten me."

I frowned. "You're, like, a constant downer, huh?"

"I hear that enough from my dad and my aunt. I don't need it from the son of the god of death. Talk about irony."

"I know irony. It's almost as good as sarcasm."

"Sarcasm is a defense mechanism, you know."

"Well, I'm put in constant life-threatening situations. A sense of humor lightens the load." I slumped in my chair, plugging my headphones into my iPod and shoving the ear-buds into my ears. Basically, we ignored each other for most of the ride.  
At least until Mozart started playing from her cellphone and she answered it reluctantly.

Us demigods tend to shy from cellphones. Something about projecting our voices all over of the world wasn't really appealing when you're running for your life. Imagine a Las Vegas-esque neon light blinking on and off above our heads. _Hey, dude! Eat me! I'm low-fat!_

"Hello?...Oh, hi mom."

My curiosity was peaked. I paused my music but pretended I was still listening to it. A proven eavesdropping technique.

"No, mom. I'm good. I don't need you checking up on me every 20 minutes. It's dangerous anyway...Yes, everything in my life is dangerous. I can't really help that...Why not? Because I was kind of born this way...Do you want me to rip out half of my DNA? Yeah, that'll work. You tell me when they develop a way to do that...Of course that was sarcasm!" Tess groaned. She mouthed the word _idiot_ to no one, and I realized it was her favorite word. "Mom, Cason is already at Avery. I can't leave him...You're the one that was all 'Come on Tess! This will be good for you. A chance to express your pent up anger and depression.' What happened to that, mom?" She practically screamed, putting her hand over the receiver as if it would actually do anything. "Every second I sit here talking to you it's dangerous, both for my mental and physical health. I'm hanging up on you before you aggravate me so much I chuck the phone out the window." She flipped the phone shut and went on reading like nothing happened.

Of course, I had to say something, right?

"You need a pick-me-up." I grinned.

"You wanna buy me an ice-cream cone, di Angelo?" Tess scowled at the page.

I sat back in my chair, smiling even though she muttered angrily into her book. She knew my name after all. Everyone did. I was roguishly handsome, after all.

A word about what little I know about wherever I was going to. That would be Avery Institute for the Artistically Advanced. The building was big. Really big. Imagine a small town. You could fit two into that brick building. It was gargantuan. It was also (shocker) an institute for the artistically advanced. Go figure. Have you ever seen the movie _Fame_? It was like that, only not for old people.

Basically, I would be surrounded by dancers and singers and actors and painters for a year. Whoopee. Artistic types make me moody. Except for maybe the dancers. I could get used to the dancers.

Of course, if Chiron had tried to get me into a leotard, he would have woken up with half of his tail cut off and all of his cd's demolished. So they would have to squeeze me into another category if they didn't want me wreaking havoc on the entire camp.

As if I weren't already peeved that Annabeth had officially decided that my life wasn't suckish enough and sent me to Avery. Now, I had to actually do something. This is not the life for a beautiful person. Besides, Avery was basically boarding school for crazy artist-types. One of which I was not.

Not that I had never been to boarding school. Most people like me have. Of course, my experience was limited to a fort-like school in the middle of nowhere with a Manticore on the staff. Not really the first place I would pick for my kids, if I ever live long enough to have some. And the food there was terrible.

But Avery is the first (and hopefully last) school for the artistically advanced that I would ever have to go to. I would be okay with never even setting foot on another school for the rest of my life. But hey, maybe, whenever something dangerous happened and I got kicked out, it would be big enough to get me on the news.

Anyway, so dancing was out of the equation. There were a bunch of other things they could have finagled my way into. Here, I'll let you guess.

**Please pick one of the following.**

**A) Drama**

**B) Music**

**C) Art**

**D) Writing**

If you guessed C, well, then you don't know me at all, because I can't draw a flower without it looking like an atomic bomb. Writing...hello? Dyslexia? Drama...too dramatic.

So, they found the easiest thing for me to do. Annabeth saddled me with an old guitar and sent me off. But hey, I played Guitar Hero for, like, years in the Lotus Hotel and Casino. It couldn't be much different, right?

While I was pondering where the buttons were on my instrument, Tess lugged out a trumpet, a flute, and a violin form the very back of the van. I gaped at her. "You play all of that?"

"Well, not all of us are simpletons like you. They couldn't lug us both in here if neither of us had any talent whatsoever."

"If I didn't know you better, I would say that was insulting."

"You would be right."

I didn't like Tess very much. The fact that they had out the two of us in the same division wasn't really comforting. But that's beside the point. Let's return to the retardedness of boarding school.

It was okay that we were in the same thing, because the girls weren't even allowed in the guy's dorms anyway, even though they were right next to each other. From what I'd seen, the dorms were nice, each with a nice view of the ocean around us, fully stocked mini-fridge, and a microwave in case we craved that microwavable burrito sitting there, tantalizingly.

The only thing I didn't like about the dorms it the beds; more specifically, the fact that there were two of them. This just did not fly. I did like that just around the corner were the girls dorms (even if Tess were there, the other girls were enough to satisfy me), but that wasn't enough to redeem Annabeth. I flew solo. Unless I was in trouble. Then I had a few skeletons to back me up. And the occasional son of Poseidon. Occasionally.

I was already heading up the steps, thinking of the microwavable burrito that awaited me. Tess hung back, standing at the base of the stairs, looking up at the formidable building that would be our home away from home until we got kicked out. "Indecision in an unattractive feature."

She squinted at me. "Indecision. A four syllable word. And we haven't even entered the school yet." But she still stood at the bottom of the steps.

Normally, this is where the dapper young man (and main character) would offer the girl a hand and an inspiring phrase and everything would be okay, right before riding off into the sunset on a horse. But Tess was hardly a girl. And while I was both dapper and a main character, I was all inspired-out for the day. As it turned out, I wouldn't be riding off into the sunset with Tess anyway.

So instead, I just shrugged and headed up to the office, heaving my guitar case up behind me. She followed anyway. Making a decision was way easier when someone else did it for you.

Our principal looked like an eternally impregnated turkey. He was all flab, with a chunk of skin hanging down under his chin and skinny little legs that looked as if they would break from supporting the mass that was his body. Kind of like setting a bowling ball on a few toothpicks. Only if the bowling ball was wearing a fancy, most likely expensive suit. He straightened his tie as I came in, waiting for my reluctant companion and me.

He grinned. I saluted him loosely, plopping down my bags and leaving scuffmarks on the polished white-tiled floor. Aggravating Tess didn't help my mood. Especially since she aggravated back. "You must be Nico di Angelo. Nice to meet you, nice to meet you!" He shook my hands with a grip that surprisingly strong for a turkey. At least he was enthusiastic.

"Um...you must be some guy I'm supposed to know the name of." I massaged my aching hand.

"Mr. Duport. Nice to meet you," he repeated, before giving Tess his attention. "You must be Mr. Pearson's sister. You'll be proud to know that he is doing a great job! He painted that picture over there on the wall. Impressive, isn't it? It's only his first year too. His instructors were very impressed. Very impressed."

Whoever Mr. Pearson was, I was jealous. It was hard not to be. I had no idea what the picture was supposed to be, but I could tell it was awesome. It wasn't fair that he could do that, and when I put a pencil to paper in somehow came out looking like Hiroshima. I could actually give survivors panic attacks, if I ever met one. Which would probably only be on my next trip to dads, seeing as most of them died.

"I'm glad," Tess said graciously, patting her bangs into place like she did when she was nervous. "Cason's always had trouble fitting in."

"Excuse me?" A blond boy popped up from behind a desk, dropping a huge folder down onto it with a bang. Too many blond people, I decided. Just too many. "I'm fitting in quite well, thank you."

Later, I would learn that Cason Pearson was a junior, in the art program, a star student, and a son of Athena that just happened to Tess's full-blood brother. Now, I was just really confused.

Ah, the life of beautiful people.

**Ta-dah! So, basically, I like this chapter. Tell me if you don't. Especially if you don't. And tell me what you think. 'Cause I can't go on thinking I'm as awesome as I do if I'm not. And I'm pretty sure I am.**

**If you followed that, +100 awesome points. An extra 98 if you review. That's a total of 198 awesome points. I think that's pretty generous, thank you very much.**


	2. I Witness Some Face Planting Action

**Why, hello hello! So, not so many reviews last time. Understandable. I forgot that I only got, like, one at the beginning of Favors of Shadow. Sigh. It still hurts my heart. So review and make me feel better! Ity's important that I don't get depressed, cause then my writing would be depressing, and then no one would like me anymore. And then I would be even more depressed. It's a vicious cycle. So...yeah. Make me feel better.**

**On another note, colorguard is over. Sigh. No more throwing six foot poles into the air and failing to catch them in a comical fashion. My life has lost it's meaning. LUCKILY! Winter Guard is GO! We're going to kick some major butt. Cause we are the bomb. Believe it.**

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I Witness Some Face Planting Action_

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Cason Pearson was taller than me, with a red hoodie, a black t-shirt, and faded jeans that looked like someone had attacked them with a paintbrush and a pair of scissors. He was also my new roommate.

As if one Pearson wasn't enough.

Cason didn't pick up on my despair as quickly as I had wanted him too. Instead, he kept going on about the roommate he had for the past few months.

"He smelled, man," he told me, horrified. "He smelled like he died, came back to life, and then took a walk through the dumpster. I had nightmares about walking tuna cans for a month. Now I just can't smell anymore."

After that little rant, he preceded to ignore me and move on to his sister.

Well, you'd be amazed, but I'm used to it.

I know, I know. When you're this devilishly attractive, who would ever ignore you? It confused me too.

After the whole, you know, Down With Kronos campaign, life pretty much went back to normal. That is, I wasn't so much as a blip on the demigod radar. I basically ceased to exist. The occasional camper would come up and be like, "Hey! You're that dead guy!"

...

Way to go, kid. You'll get far in life.

I was awoken from my appreciation of that guys need for a brain by laughter. Tess's laughter.

Cason was a miracle worker. I thought she only had one gear.

Irritable.

He was grinning, his white teeth flashing against the tan color of his skin. He was a surfer, that was for sure. Darn California kids.

"Anyway," he concluded. "Today is going to be a good day." He tweaked Tess nose, and she looked appalled (see, Annabeth? I can use big words too). "I got my sister. And I got my roommate..."

"Now, if only I had my roommate." Not even I missed Tess tone. It was back on her first gear. Irritable. It's nice to know some things never change.

"Aven is a little, um..." Cason narrowed his eyes like he was trying to find the right word. "Airheaded, maybe?"

Tess rolled her eyes. "Oh, happy day. I'd rather room with a toad. Is that an option?"

That's Tess. The charmer.

"Come on," her brother reasoned. "Aven is pretty cool. At least she won't try to copy your homework like the last roommate."

"Says you," Tess muttered darkly.

I almost rolled my eyes myself. "Can we move this along?" I asked, complete with hand motions. "There's a microwavable burrito with my name on it."

Mr. Durant cleared his throat. "Well, of course, Mr. di Angelo. Leave your things here for now. They need to be searched."

I was very glad for the Mist. I don't know what he would see, but he wouldn't see the sheathed sword embedded in my guitar case.

Maybe a pretend light saber. I'm sure it wouldn't be the weirdest thing a kid ever brought.

"I bet you ten bucks I know where Aven is," said Cason, holding out his open hand to the principal.

Mr. Durant looked at his hand with a raised eyebrow before turning back to the luggage. "Why don't I keep my money and you go down to the dance studio."

"Can't blame a guy for trying," Cason said good-naturedly.

His optimism would really get on my nerves.

Tess let herself be dragged down the hallway by her brother. I, however, had a little more dignity than that and walked a little behind them, taking in the look of the place that would be my prison for the next, eh, two weeks, if I tried my hardest.

I figured that they must have a really big problem with kids getting shoved into lockers, because each one was big enough to fit me comfortably, and I wasn't a toothpick. They were painted a dark, muddy brown, with silver showing in specks under the bad paint job. The white tiled floor had somehow melted into false wood paneling, and the walls were painted some kind of cream color that Cason would later tell me was actually a shade of brown called khaki.

Not like I really cared what the specific name for the color on the old walls was. I still call it some cream color.

And, of course, as main characters are prone to do when they stray from the beaten path, I got lost.

Cason and Tess had disappeared down some corridor. Maybe I'd missed a turn, or something. After all, if this place was big enough to contain all of this greatness, surely it was big enough for that too.

And, as a demigod, what was I supposed to do? Ask for directions? Okay, so maybe that would have been a good decision, but no one was even remotely near me anyway. Besides, asking for directions isn't a very heroic thing to do.

Then again, neither is running into a glass door.

I took a few steps back, cursing in Ancient Greek while other kids even younger than me pointed and laughed. I sighed. I looked at them, just a little bit of a look, and they shut up and went the other was. It was just like camp after all. Something about is scary, apparently. It couldn't be the fact that I hung out with dead guys on my vacation.

Just to get away with what little dignity I had left, I opened the door like I had meant to do that the whole time and stepped through quickly, ducking into yet another hallway that led somewhere else.

I was waiting for those big directories that they have in malls to pop up somewhere.

Luckily, when I came to the next glass door, I didn't run into it. It was clear, not the murky stuff that they have in churches, and I could hear some song playing on the other side. I peered in, almost afraid of what I would see but too serious to turn around.

There was a bunch of people in that room. There was a girl sitting in the corner on top of a speaker that boomed some song I'd never heard. A man, presumably a teacher, leaned against the mirrored wall, approving. Only three people were dancing on the floor.

One was a guy, and I could tell from one look he was as gay as could be. There was always something about them that made you see it. With dancers, it's way easier. And let me tell, this guy was gay.

But he seemed perfectly at ease with himself and what he was doing, and you gotta give a guy props for that.

There was a girl to his right, the one he was technically dancing with. She had chocolate brown hair that was cropped short and choppy around her heart shaped face. Her eyes were closed in concentration, but other than she moved with relative ease.

The third was a girl too, seemingly trying to stop the boy from dancing with the other girl, pounding her fists on his bac and jumping backward like she had shot from a cannon as the chorus started, twirling when she landed and falling into a crumpled heap on the floor. She was small, short, what more poetic people might have called fine-boned. Her skin was olivey, her eyes were and icy green, like frozen mint, bright under long lashes. Her chestnut brown hair was tied up in a short ponytail, and short pieces of bangs that had fallen out of her bobby pins slapped her forehead with ever step. She was the soft kind of pretty that you could only find in the girls who never wore any make-up.

Don't get me wrong. She was no daughter of Aphrodite, but she wasn't exactly unattractive. Maybe that was hormones talking. What use are they anyway? All they do is lead poor, miserable guys into awkward situations.

They spun around, dancing in sync to perfection.

The smaller girls lips moved with the chorus, the phantom of the lyrics to the song booming from the speaker.

_My heart was racing, _

_ My mind was screaming,_

_ You've got, your whole life, to do these things._

_ But legs were shaking,_

_ My hands were searching for her,_

_ In the backseat of my car._

It looked like the small girl was the guy's brain, trying to stop him from doing something naughty that he was (evidentially) going to regret.

"Aven, quite singing!" snapped the teacher. "You don't sing! You're his conscious."

If anyone had talked to me like that, I would have offered him one of those witty remarks I'm full of that would have gotten me kicked out all the sooner. But the girl, Aven, just ducked her head sheepishly and glued her lips together, sealing away to words into her head. She seemed to be concentrating more on not singing then dancing. I was proved correct when she face planted next to the door.

She dragged herself up from off of the floor, surprisingly quickly for someone who had just wiped out on tile. Her knee was skinned and bleeding. Green eyes flickered to me by the door. The corner of her lips barely rose before the teacher shouted again.

"Stop smiling! You're sad. You're trying to keep him from getting together with her. Why are you smiling? Are you _glad_ that he's in trouble? 'Cause that's what it looks like."

If I didn't know better, I would have though that she winked at me discretely and carried on without another word.

I stood there for a few minutes, and the song came to a close. Aven stood, face-to-face with the boy, which was ridiculous since he was about a foot taller than her, before they both looked over at the other girl as the last beat gargled out from the soundbox.

As soon as the music stopped playing, she broke into giggles and gave the guy a high five. "You make a convincing melodramatic teenager."

"I have a lot of experience," he replied, wrinkling his nose.

"That was not as good as the last time, guys," said the teacher. He glanced at the girl sitting on the speaker, who was clapping like it was the last thing she would ever do. "Kashton, your landing on that leap was too heavy. Desiree, you fell out of your turns. Aven, you have fish feet."

I made a face. That sounded gross.

Aven looked at her feet, either in an ashamed kind of way or to make sure that there weren't fish attached to her legs.

"We only have a few weeks before we perform, people," he told them. I was reminded of those crazy football coaches from old movies. He had the crew cut and the clipboard. All he was missing was a whistle.

"And if you keep calling up in here on Saturday during these hours, we will have plenty of time to spare," Aven noted, ducking down to unzip her huge blue bag. She pulled out a pair of huge gray sweatpants and pulled them on over her shorts. Readjusting the straps on her solid black leotard, she waved herself out of the door.

I hid in a bush.

Obviously, I could not fool Aven Arnett.

Reaching out a hand casually, she grabbed the extra cloth around the shoulder of my hoodie and yanked me out from behind the fake plant with strength I wouldn't have thought she had if I hadn't experienced first hand.

She pulled me over her shoulder until we got to what I expected was the cafeteria. I wasn't sure, but the old ladies in hairnets were basically universal for _school food._ Except here, school food was gourmet pizza and some kind of French soda.

"Did you like it?" Aven asked, smiling at me in an annoying way.

"What?" I replied. "Getting dragged down the hallway by a little girl half my size? No, not particularly."

What was it with the girls I was meeting lately? First Tess, and now, one sentence into our conversation, I was already prepared to stuff my mouth with whatever food was in front of me so that I wouldn't have to talk.

"No, stupid," she said. At least when she insulted me, she did it with a smile. That just made it so much better. "The dance. I worked hard on it. I want to know what you think. You were watching the whole thing, after all."

"Actually, I arrived just in time to see you greet the floor with your face," I replied irritably.

She grimaced at her knee. "Don't laugh. That hurt." Aven swung her leg back and forth, like she was making sure it still worked. "Anyway, so my name is Aven. I like fast food, cheesy love films, and eating ice cream out of the carton. And you are?" She held out her hand, and her fingernails were bright orange and stubby.

I was saved from answering, thank the gods, by an out of breath Cason and an angry Tess. "Finally found you," he was panting. "We went down to the dance studio and Mr. O'Neil said you had just left."

"Nico?" his sister said accusingly. I don't really know what for. All I did was end up with a hungry dancer. And when I say hungry, I mean hungry.

Somehow, she had gotten her hands on food, and Aven was currently trying to eat two hamburgers at once, one in each hand. She swallowed and looked up apologetically. "Dancing burns carbs. They need to be replaced."

Tess was tapping her foot impatiently.

"My name is Aven. I like fast food, cheesy love films, and eating ice cream out of the carton. And you are?" Aven asked pleasantly. She didn't hold her hand out this time, seeing as in was covered in ketchup.

Tess narrowed her eyes to stilts. "Your new roommate."

Aven's hand flew to her forehead, a big streak of red painted right above her eyebrows. "That was today? Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. This just wont do." She stood up, carefully wrapping her food in the paper it had been given to her in and holding them in one hand, grabbing Tess by the arm with the one she still had free after wiping it on her crumpled up napkin. "I thought it was next Saturday. And then O'Neil called a last minute rehearsal. Oh, I'm so sorry." You could hear her apologizing all the way down the hallway, Tess being dragged ungratefully behind, as Aven tried to simultaneously talk and shovel a hamburger into her mouth.

"Girls," I muttered darkly.

"Amen," Cason said in reply, grinning in a flash of white. "But don't tell Tess I agreed with you. Then we would both have a problem."

**I think this is a pretty good chapter, I'm not going to lie. Well, I have twelve people on author alert. Two reviews just aren't going to cut it. At least four!**

**Oh, btw. Favors of Shadow is basically over. I put a poll on my profile, asking what you guys wanted me to write next. I'm going to try to do two at once. If you pick a FoS sequel, I won't do an epilogue. If you pick one of the other choices, I will. How is that?**

**Let me know what you think. **

**The review button (a very important part of the fanfiction experience) is located rather conveniently beneath this sentence. Imagine that it is a big red button. It wants to be pressed.  
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	3. The Oddities of Women

**Yay! You guys did good! Congratulations. I'm proud of you. My little fanfictioners are growing up! How cute.**

**This chapter is loooooong. Like, 12 pages. You're welcome. :)**

**On another, less happy note, I am losing my family Fantasy Football league. Our dog is winning. The irony is not lost on me.**

The next two days, absolutely nothing happened. Which was weird. Usually, I would have been able to recreate the principal's office in my mind after two days.

But no. I was safe, for now.

Safe is boring.

Tess didn't agree. "I'd rather be safe than running for my life," she said heatedly.

"But running for your life is fun," I told her. "There is a chair in the cafeteria with my butt imprinted on it. How is that okay?"

The only reason I saw Tess before Monday was because, oh yeah, my roommate was her brother. Obviously, a certain horse wanted us to keep in contact, which we wouldn't have if I had any choice in the matter. Which I didn't.

Well played, Horse Man, well played.

I didn't see Tess's roommate at all. Then again, I don't think that she did either. From what I could tell, Tess was avoiding Aven as much as possible.

"She's weird," she told her brother in a whisper that anyone could have heard.

She shouldn't have acted so surprised when I answered. "Yeah, Cason. Even us half-bloods who chase monsters in our free time and have super powers have standards."

I don't think I deserved the punch that she gave me.

It wasn't hard for Tess to avoid her though. Aven spent every spare minutes she had out of the dorm room. She went to the dance studios, walked with a few friends to the art rooms, and ate enough food for two people at every meal.

However, it was harder on Monday, which was officially my first day. Sure, you had all of the artsy classes (geez, can't wait), but you also had math and science and English and history. After music, yippee, was math. Of course, they gave me that in the morning, before my brain worked. It was the easiest class they offered, but it was still enough to make my brain fry.

Not that the dyslexia didn't have anything to do with it.

Gods, I hate school.

Then a (semi) familiar face popped into the classroom, a mountain of books in her arms. She looked at me, zeroing in. I started squirming. But then she smiled and walked over and sat down in the empty seat next to me.

Kevin, who I could already peg as a teacher's pet, pouted. "Your seat is over there," he said, pointing to the chair in the front row.

"This is Melanie's seat," Aven said, shoving papers into a folder unceremoniously. "And she's gone now. So now it's my seat."

She smiled at him, and to my surprise he just sniffed and sat down. She winked at me. "What's up?"

All I could think of to say was, "You chose a seat in the front row?"

Aven looked like she wasn't sure whether she should be laughing or not. "Sure." Then she giggled. "We aren't all back seat students."

I was wondering what was going on. See, normally, I kind of secrete death, which is gross and nasty, but there it is. Most people don't like that attribute of Nico di Angelo. But Aven didn't seem to notice. She kept talking to people around us, introducing me, the new student.

It was the closest I had ever come to torture.

Aven sneezed, rubbing her unusually small nose like it hurt, as the teacher walked in. She zeroed in again, like she had when she had seen me. But she didn't stop and smile, either. She just looked at the teacher, perplexed.

There was nothing special about him. He was short, with a buzz cut and glasses, wearing a blue shirt and a patterned tie. The name on my schedule said something like_ rM. Sonma_, which Tess had translated as Mr. Mason.

He talked slowly with an accent that I couldn't place. I found it hard to listen to him. I slowly got sleepy and was about to pass out by the end of the class. The only thing that kept me from doing so was Aven, nervously tapping her pencil on the desk and sitting up straight like someone had replaced her spine with a metal pole.

I guess the second part was the fact that she was a dancer and stuff. But the pencil was seriously annoying. Anything that keeps me from my sleepy time should not exist.

I looked up at her. "Could you _stop?_" I asked, trying to drip irritation the way that Tess dripped sarcasm.

She raised an eyebrow. Then she took the pencil and tapped it on my head. "Nope," Aven told me, smiling.

"Miss Arnett, Mr. di Angelo, please stop talking," said Mr. Mason.

Aven went all stiff again and didn't say anything the rest of the class period, not even raising her hand to answer a question, which I thought was a thing that all Front Row Kids did. Towards the end, she was trying to balance the pencil on her pursed lips, looking ridiculous, her eye looking up to the sky like she was trying to figure out the Answer to the Universe.

Which is 42, by the way.

When the bell rang, she stood up so fast that all of her books fell to the floor, scattering her papers everywhere.

Kevin sniffed. "You do that every day."

"Maybe that's why you're late all the time," offered a red hair girl behind us like she thought it would be helpful.

"Or maybe, I just don't like Mr. Mason," Aven said, picking up her papers.

"Dislike?" the girl laughed. "You hate him."

Aven looked genuinely troubled.

"Oh, I forgot," the girl with red-hair said, scratching her head. "You don't hate anyone."

Aven scratched her head guiltily. Then she scooped up her stuff and ran out of the room like it was on fire.

"I'm not that bad," I muttered.

I am not bad at all. I'm wonderful. Sometimes, people just don't realize that.

The red-haired girl smiled. There was something about it that I didn't like, like she was thinking about how it would ruin her reputation to be seen talking with the new kid.

Then something caught my eye. An orange Buzz Lightyear folder, on the floor, half sticking out under the desk. "That's Aven's," I said, pointing to it.

The other two looked at me.

"Oh, okay. I'll just go chase her down and hand it to her, even though I have no idea where she went. No big deal." I rolled my eyes when they all nodded in agreement and walked out the door. I grabbed my own things and went out searching for my fellow demigod's roommate.

Maybe it was the fact that Aven had somewhat normal hair in a place where everyone dyed theirs neon colors, or that she was wearing sweatpants I'm pretty sure she had bought in the boys section, or that the papers jutting out of her folder had been very roughly handled, but she was not hard to find.

"Hey," I said, walking up to her, holding out her folder.

She looked at me, her mint green eyes moving from me to her folder, for a few moments before she took it, shoving Buzz into the mess that she held in her arms.

"Thanks," she said, smiling, but her attention was at the big, rampaging gorilla a few yards away.

Okay, so he wasn't really a gorilla. But he was the closest thing to one I had ever seen. And I go to camp with the children of Ares, so that's saying something.

I'm talking a massive caterpillar for an eyebrow, because he only had one. His nose looked like it had been broken at least twice, his shoulders were hunched. He was, quite possibly, the ugliest thing I had seen in a letter jacket.

If this guy was a gorilla, the poor soul he was shoving into the locker was a hamster.

"Hey," I said, cupping my hands around my mouth for a make-shift megaphone. "What are you doing?"

Hamster looked like he was two breaths from having an asthma attack.

I took a wild guess. "Probably something you aren't supposed to be doing?"

Gorilla grinned. "The fifth time today."

"Must be some kind of record." I wrinkled my nose. "Maybe you should stop before he has some kind of attack."

Hamster nodded vigorously, his glasses falling down on his nose. I sighed. He really wasn't helping his case.

Gorilla narrowed his beady eyes. "You're just some transfer with an attitude problem."

"What are you, then?" I asked, grinning. It wasn't every day I found someone new to annoy. "Just some kid who hasn't fully evolved from being a monkey yet?"

He would have knit his eyebrows if he had more than one. "Hey...wait..."

"Dude, just stop." I shrugged. "Hasn't he suffered enough?" I was itching to break his nose a third time. But Chiron made me promise that I wouldn't break a mortal unless he made a move first. So I was trying my hardest to give him a reason to throw a punch.

Aven, however, was not under any kind of agreement.

One minute, she was a few steps behind, chewing on her lip worriedly. The next, she had propelled herself forward like only a dancer could, planting her fist on the guy's massive nose. His nose cracked. Lucky number three.

When he hit the ground, I looked back in awe. But Aven didn't look angry. Upset, a little guilty, maybe. Not the kind of face you expected to see on a girl who had just defeated a gorilla with one hit.

Aven held out her hand to him. "Sorry," she said, and she was. Genuinely.

He looked up at her, clutching his face with a hand the size of a trash can lid, everything in his eyes that was missing from hers. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her down to the ground. I didn't know where she had put her books and folders, but if she were still holding them, they would have flown everywhere and it would be raining math homework.

Aven rubbed her forehead. "Ow."

Then I kicked him in the balls.

"Didn't your mother ever teach you manners?" I him.

Aven scoffed. "You're just looking for a reason to hit him."

"Either way, he isn't having any kids."

"You're a hero to girls everywhere." She smiled, rubbing her button nose like it was hers that had been broken. "Now where did I put my things?"

Hamster skittered off, pushing his glasses up on his nose.

"You're welcome," I muttered, but Aven didn't seem to think anything of it.

Then she reached down a hand to Gorilla, who was dry heaving on the floor, curled up in a pathetic little ball that I looked upon with satisfaction.

"I'll help you to the nurses office," she said, her face contorted into something like concern. I was astonished.

So was Gorilla. He stared up at her, his face beaded with sweat and as red as a beet. Then he growled, staggering to his feet. He was leaning heavily on the lockers behind him, glaring at Aven like he was imagining her suffering a terrible and no doubt painful death.

Well, that just wouldn't do.

"Calm down, idiot." I grinned wolfishly. "I'll make sure that there is permanent damage the next time."

Unlike usual, when I tried my hardest to be nice and stuff, I let my inner Hades radiate, and I knew that it worked. Fear can be oh, so useful. He paled, his face turning from red to snow white like someone had shut off a switch in his head. He shuffled down the hallways, still panting.

I consider that a job well done.

Aven tried to tuck her bangs behind her ear, only to have them fall back in front of her eyes a moment later. "I need a haircut," she said factually.

"That's it?" I said, walking after her, because she had already set off down the hallway again, her papers back in her arms, like nothing had happened. "You just punched a guy in the face and then apologized."

Aven raised an eyebrow. "Is that weird?"

"Yes."

"Oh."

She just shrugged, and I was left behind to find my own way to my next class.

I looked up at the sky._ Gods, please save me from the oddities of women._

By the end of the day, I was exhausted. I had to put up with Aven in four classes, Tess in three, and they expected me to actually have the energy to learn at the same time. Now, I might be half-god, but really. This is impossible.

And then they have homework. _Homework!_ I live in a dorm (for now). I don't have a home. How can I do homework when I don't have a home?

My teachers did not appreciate my insights.

Mrs. Rapier snapped her ruler on the desk where my hand had been a second before. "Mr. di Angelo. I don't care where you do it. You can do in a freaking Porta-Potty. Just get it done."

I'm not sure whether I like her or not.

And, when I get back to my dorm, Cason and Tess are reading matching dictionaries in the corner. I stood in the doorway. I'm pretty sure my jaw was practically unhinged, so I probably looked really funny. But Tess just looked at me like I was something nasty on the base of her shoe. "I came over here to help you with your guitar."

"So you sit in my room and read...something really big and most likely ridiculously hard to understand?" I tried to read the title of the book she held in her hand, but my dyslexia made the letters swim around.

Tess snapped her book closed. "I was waiting for you."

I looked at her, really wanting her to go away. "Well, what'd you do that for?"

Her gray eyes narrowed. "Come on," she said harshly, getting up and throwing the book on the desk—my desk. Okay, really Cason's desk. But in my room. Our room...but the point is, not her room. "I need to go get my tuner."

"Well, why didn't you do that while you waited for me?" I asked her crossly.

"And give you a chance to run away? Not a chance. I'm not letting your lack of any talent whatsoever humiliate you, and me by association."

"I'd be perfectly happy if you didn't associate with me."

"That can be your Christmas gift."

It didn't take long for us to walk down to hallway. I was hit by a sudden wave of dismay as I realized that the devil's dorm was right around the corner. It's like knowing there is a mass murderer behind the shower curtain, only worse, because it isn't quite so cliché.

She fumbled with her room key and slipped inside. "Don't come in. Aven is taking a shower."

I wrinkled my nose in distaste. "She isn't my type."

She raised an eyebrow. "She's a girl, di Angelo. That's about as good as you are ever going to get."

"Oh, har har."

She closed the door. I was left standing awkwardly outside of her room, hands in pockets, wondering how on earth I had gotten stuck with her. The question would haunt me for several more weeks.

Then came the bang. And the crash. And the crunch. And a lot of other scary noises that I didn't think were Tess. I knocked tentatively on the door. "Tess? Are you wrestling an elephant or do you need to go on a diet?"

Another crash. "Now isn't the time for humor!" she screeched. "Get in here."

I tried the doorknob half-heartedly. "It's locked," I told her, shrugging.

She growled. Like, seriously growled. Then, right when I took a step back, the door went flying off of its hinges, ramming into the opposite wall, Tess riding on it as she slammed up against it. Kids poked their head out of their rooms, murmuring something about new kids. I grinned. Then I waved my hands, manipulating the Mist as well as I could. "Nothing to see here. These are not the droids you're looking for, and all that jazz." They nodded sheepishly and ducked back into their rooms like there wasn't a smoking door crumpled in a heap in front of them.

I looked curiously into the room. "Hmm. What's that?"

Tess looked at me in disbelief. Then she rose to her feet grudgingly. "Mr. Mason," she spat.

"Last time I checked, he wasn't a dog," I said after her, following her into her dorm.

Mr. Mason, still dressed in his shirt and tie, was standing in front of us, his canines looking unusually sharp. That might be because his head was twice the size it usually was and looked like a nightmarish Scooby-Doo. His shirt was ripped, and one of his teeth was missing, but Tess, in the few seconds after he had crashed in through the window (I assumed, seeing as the window was broken and he had glass in his...fur/hair) hadn't done that much damage.

I looked around and reached into the shadow of her bed stand, pulling out my sword. Sometimes it's handy to be a son of Hades. Storing things in easily accessible shadows is one of those times. Tess looked at me. "Nice trick."

"Isn't it?"

Mr. Mason barked.

Tess scowled. "Cynocephali," she hissed.

"No, he's a dog." I ducked as he swung a giant, rather meaty hand in my direction. I could feel the air whistle above my head. "That's not good."

I ran at him with my sword. He deflected it with his hand, clawing my stomach. I jumped back in a fashion that might have been embarrassing if I weren't, you know, worried for my life. My shirt ripped. "That was my favorite t-shirt!"

"All you have is t-shirts!" Tess screamed. I ignored her.

My sword swung down. His ear fell to the floor at my feet. Tess jumped away from it with a muffled complaint. I took a step back as Mr. Mason advanced, somehow tripped over a bed. Success for Nico di Angelo. Blood dripped down the left side of his head, trickling into his wide eye. "It's only my first day, Mr. Mason. Really, couldn't you have waited?"

"You're much stronger than my current prey," he said, his voice deep and muffled. He laughed. "So long. I've waited so long to taste demigod flesh again."

"That's gross," I said sincerely.

He barked. Or laughed again. Wow. This dog thing is really confusing. Anyway, he made some sort of doggish noise, and I rolled out of the way of his hands. He attacked one of the pillows. I really hoped it was Tess's.

I stood up and realized, all too late, that I was still standing on the bed, and hit my head really hard on the ceiling, nearly missing the swaying fan that would have chopped my handsome face to pieces. And who would want that?

No one, that's who.

"Ouch." I sat back down on the bed.

"Nico!" Tess scolded. I wasn't sure whether I should be offended that she was still mad about her pillow and didn't sound worried at all.

Then an arrow embedded itself in the wall next to my ear. "When did he get a bow?" I shrieked (which would have been unmanly if I weren't me) and backed away, almost falling off of the bed I kept forgetting I was resting on.

But Mr. Mason did not have a bow. Instead, he had a huge hole in his chest. He howled like a werewolf from one of those stupid Halloween movies that are totally fake and collapsed on the floor, which looked strange, since he was simultaneously blowing away in the wind.

Aven, go figure, stood behind him in the doorway to the bathroom, a bright green bow in her arms. Steam billowed out from the shower. There was a puddle by her feet. She was wrapped in purple towel, her hair still sudsy from shampoo and sticking to her face. I backed up again, really falling off of the bed this time.

She shook her head like a dog, her hair slinging water and soap all over the room. Then she looked at me and Tess, who was standing with a broken chair in her hand like a club in the doorway.

"You guys are sooooo loud," she said, wrinkling her nose. "Now, do you guys need some explanations, or can I finish my shower? I would prefer to finish my shower."

Without waiting for us to answer, Aven turned on her heels and marched back into the bathroom. Tess slid down the wall behind her. "This is going to take a lot of lying to get away with."

I hefted my sword over my shoulder and grabbed the whistle thingy on Tess's bedside table. "Your tuner," I told her when she looked at me in shock. "You were going to make me not such a failure, remember?"

**So, the big question. Nico needs a lady. **

**Aven or Tess? **

**Prepare to explain your answer. :) **

**Now, as we all know, there is this handy little feature, called a review, in which you can tell me which one you would rather have, what you think, and basically just tell me how awesome or not awesome I am. And guess what? It is right below this sentence! Convenient, huh?  
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	4. Getting Half the Picture

**So...Basically, I'm not sure how much to tell you guys. I had everything planned out, like, air tight. But then I looked back and realized it was boring. So, now, I have to work with another idea. A budding, growing, really slow coming idea that's torture trying to write.**

**In other words, other ideas are appreciated.**

* * *

_**Getting Half the Picture**_

* * *

I despise Aven Arnett. With a passion that burns deeply within me.

Mostly because she acted like everything was normal Tuesday morning.

That night, I did not find out what was going on, despite the fact that in about, oh, say, a week or two, it just might change my plans for the year.

Hint. Hint.

I did, however, find out that Aven like ridiculously long showers and that Tess refuses to cut short a lesson even when her roommate is potentially dangerous demigod or because I need to go to bed. I'm not sure which one is more important.

I need my beauty sleep.

So, I went to bed at two in the morning, my fingers practically bleeding, completely expecting an explanation when I walked into math the next day.

I was wrong.

The new, blond teacher looked up at me as I walked in (late) and frowned. "Late, Mr. di Angelo?"

I stood in the doorway awkwardly. Aven wrinkled her nose, her stuff already splayed all over the desk. She was scribbling on a piece of paper something that could have been a stick figure or an artichoke. "Ms. Childs, I bet he got lost or something."

I ducked my head and mumbled an apology. Then I shuffled to my seat, hopefully looking shameful and stuff, and plopped down into the seat beside Aven. I was about to begin my passionate interrogation when the teacher Ms. Childs looked at Aven sharply.

"Is that the seat I assigned to you, Miss Arnett?"

Aven sat ramrod straight, blinking at the math teacher we had never seen before in confusion before zeroing in on the chair she had picked for herself in the front row. "No?" she answered slowly.

"I make the rules in this class, Miss Arnett."

Aven nodded sheepishly and gathered her things under the eyes of the class as quickly as she could before practically galloping to the front of the room.

I could not believe that just happened.

I was sitting, all alone, clueless, and now, along with a lack of sleep, I had no explanation.

Obviously, karma decided that I needed bad luck to balance out my natural good looks.

She looked over her shoulder at me, pulling one of her braided pigtails and wiggling her nose like a rabbit. Then she turned and scribbled on a piece of torn notebook paper, before folding it into a paper football and flicking it across the room when Ms. Childs wasn't looking.

It hit my nose.

Thanks, karma. That was totally necessary.

I sighed and unfolded it.

_I'll be in the dance studio you found me in on Saturday. Being Tess._

_-Aven_

Her handwriting was small and curling, with even spaces and perfect letters like she had typed it up on the computer. I looked back at her, but her attention had already drifted from my need for information back to the problems the teacher wrote on the board.

So basically, the rest of the day was torture.

In history, I couldn't fall asleep.

In science, I actually didn't even try to sleep.

In English, I got so agitated by my inability to nap and replenish my energy levels that I started tapping my pencil, which annoyed me, because I hate when people tap their pencils. But I couldn't stop! It's a curse.

Don't even get me started on lunch.

I didn't help that I had classes with Aven and other classes with Tess, and some classes with both Aven _and_ Tess, and watching them both pay attention like nothing was wrong irked me to no end.

I was so frustrated, I just used the word "irk" to describe it.

That's not natural.

So, when the bell rang for the end of my final class, I did not bother going to my room. I did not bother writing the homework assignment (what else is new?) And I most certainly did not bother to pay attention when the teacher rambled off what we needed the next day.

I grabbed Tess's wrist and ran out of the room like my pants were on fire.

"Honestly, Nico," she snapped. "What's your problem?"

"Aven is my problem!"

"It's not that big of a deal!"

I glanced back at her sharply. "Did she tell you?"

"No," Tess snorted. "She wanted to explain to the both of us."

"How did you sleep in the same room with her without going crazy?"

"Because I'm practical enough to realize that her explanation might not be anything more than 'I'm a demigod and you just never saw me camp.'"

That made me stop. I hadn't thought about that before. "Really?"

"What else would it be?" she sniffed. "You aren't exactly observant. And with all the new kids flowing in the past three years it's completely plausible that no one noticed her."

Part of me felt really stupid.

The other part of me felt like that was totally not what was going on and was really curious to find out who the heck Aven Arnett was.

"I guess she could have survived without camp. She's only the daughter of a minor god or goddess, I think," Tess theorized aloud.

"I don't think it's that simple."

"Why not?" she inquired testily.

I didn't tell her about Gorilla, or that since that had happened I'd had this really terrible feeling bubbling in the pit of my unforgiving stomach. "It's just a feeling."

"No offense to your 'animal instincts' or your 'man gut' whatever you feel like calling them, but I'm going to laugh when you've been tearing yourself up and all she says is 'I was there, you just never saw me.'"

"Do you seriously think that someone like Aven could be in the same camp as us and no one noticed her?" I countered.

Tess frowned. "It's possible."

I snorted. "That would be like not noticing getting hit in the head with a brick."

She had no reply. She didn't need one. Because at that point, I managed to run into the same glass door for the second time. "Ouch," I muttered, rubbing my forehead.

Tess stifled a giggle, or tried to and failed miserably, and I opened the door before she could give me some witty comment that I didn't need.

Aven's mint green eyes peeked out through the clear glass of the dance room, like she had been waiting for us, which I guess she had. She opened the door and motioned us inside, checking out in the hallway theatrically like anyone would be eavesdropping on a bunch of high schoolers, and closed the door behind us.

"Hi!" she bubbled.

Tess and I looked at her like she was mentally impaired. "Is this really the time?" Tess asked, patting her bangs into place.

Aven looked shocked. "It's always time to say hello."

Over the course of the day, she had obviously gotten irritated with her pigtails, and just thrown her hair up in a bun. Little bits of hair were jutting out in a comical fashion, like she hadn't bothered checking a mirror. She had a bruise the size of a walnut on her forehead.

She looked embarrassed when she saw my looking. "I...er...fell. Up the steps."

Tess motioned for her to get on with it. "I have homework," she reminded us.

"And that's more important than this?" I asked, smirking.

"Homework is more important than everything," she sniffed, and I realized she did that a lot.

"Right," Aven said slowly. "I could, like, postpone this. Really, I wouldn't mind." She was blinking a lot, and her voice was high pitched, and I realized she was nervous.

"Not a chance."

She looked at me ruefully. "I didn't think so. Call it a blind hope." She ruffled her side bangs, and they flopped over her forehead. Tess fiddled with her own bangs, like she was making sure they weren't messed up too. "Anyway, I should get started."

"That would be good," said Tess, digging into her bag and drawing out a giant calculator.

I stared at her. "Are you going to stab her with numbers or something?"

"I'm doing my homework," she said, wrinkling her nose. "I might as well be productive."

Aven bit her lip. "Um...alright." She fidgeted, and moved over to the long bar running the wall opposite the mirror. "So, you guys realize we are all demigods, right? 'Cause that would just make my life so much easier."

Tess nodded absently, clicking in number on her calculator and scribbling the answer down on a piece of paper.

"What are you doing?" I asked, sliding down the mirrored wall and settling on the ground.

"Doing ballet exercises," she squeaked. "They calm me."

"Am I the only one taking this seriously?" I snapped. Tess glanced at me and nodded.

Aven looked offended. "I'm taking it very seriously," she insisted. "But if I don't calm down I won't say it, and I promised I would explain, and I if I don't than I'm breaking that promise, and I don't break my promises."

I exchanged a look with Tess. Aven sounded like a ten-year-old about to admit that she had been the one stealing from the cookie jar, but no one was taking her guilt seriously.

"Alright, Aven," said Tess softly, like Aven really was a worried child, resting her calculator in her lap, but, I noticed (who isn't observant?), not turning it off. "Go on."

"Okay." Aven took a deep breath and began stretching her leg on the bar, not facing us. "I'm British."

I couldn't help it. I snorted. Of all the things I was expecting to come out of Aven's mouth that had not been one of them. She glanced at me over her shoulder, and I passed it off as a cough. Tess looked at me, like _I told you so._

What Aven said next totally put her in her place.  
"I went into hiding here after escaping from a bunch of Evil Scientists."

I did more than snort. I laughed outright. No way I could pass that as a laugh.

She looked at me sadly. "It does sound a little weird. But I'm not lying. I promise."

The way she looked at us made it impossible for me to doubt her. Promises were hefty things in the world that Aven lived in, whatever that was. Tess still looked skeptical.

"Go on," she said again.

Aven took another deep breath. "My father was a prominent naturalist in England, which is my birth place."

"You don't sound British," I pointed out.

She grimaced. "I haven't been there for five years."

"That's not long enough to get rid of an accent," said Tess.

"Well, I'm in hiding," said Aven, huffing. "I'm not going to run outside, flailing my arms in the air and screaming to the heavens, 'Hey look! I have a funny accent! Come and drag me off the my prison!' That would be completely counterproductive." She looked a little weird, flailing her arms in the air while she bent over her leg on the bar.

I nodded complacently.

"Anyway," she continued. "He had married this monster of a woman and died before my first birthday. I think his name was Herald."

Silence.

I didn't snort that time.

"So, once she had me all to herself, she took me to this stupid place called the Academy, which is totally generic and really uncreative. She was a big member there."

Aven began bobbing up and down at a rapid pace. It looked like she might have started out doing something dance related, but now she was just trying to keep herself going.

"I learned Ancient Greek, and Spanish, and a little Italian, and I learned French later, but that was different. Anyway, I learned to walk on a tightrope, and to walk on my hands and how to pick locks. Although I was completely rotten at chess and painting and walking in a straight line. I learned other things, too, about myself. I could climb trees really fast, and jump super high. I could jump off of buildings and land on my feet, but I found that out later."

I tried my hardest not to think about how she found that out.

"After my fourth birthday, when I had been there for three years, they put me in this group with four others. Let's see..." She held up four fingers. "There was a girl around three months older than me, and we called her Leo." One finger went down. "And then Column and Pillar, the twins, who were exactly twelve months older than me." Two more fingers went down. "And then Jacob, who was two years older than them."

I blinked. "Leo, Column, Pillar, and then Jacob?" I asked. "One of these things doesn't belong."

Tess stared at me. "You're focusing on the completely wrong thing."

But Aven didn't hear her, or at least, if she did, she didn't bother to comment. "Well, they'd all been there since they were not even one, just like me. None of us really remembered our names but him."

"How did he remember, especially if he had been there the longest?" Tess asked.

"He carved it into his shoulder with a nail."

Silence.

"Wow," I said, just to say something. "So..."

"What did they call you?" Tess asked, trying to change the subject. "If the other girl couldn't remember her name, surely you couldn't either."

She wrinkled her nose. "I think it started with a B. Beatrice, or Brittany, or Bethany, or Bangladesh, I can't remember. So they just called me Blossom."

I had this really strange image of her dressed up like a Power Puff Girl.

"So, your name isn't Aven?"

She shook her head. "Nope. I picked that name for myself. Aven Arnett. Way better than Bangladesh."

I laughed a little, and the breath that Aven had been holding unconsciously flew out of her mouth in a gust of relief. "Okay. So. When I was ten—"

"Wait," I said suddenly."

"I would appreciate it if you didn't interrupt."

"You completely skipped, like, six years of your life."

She looked confused for a second, but she just flapped her hand again. "They don't really matter."

Tess and I looked at each other, but didn't say anything.

"So, when I was ten," she pressed on, "I went to Column and Pillar, and I was like 'I wanna leave,' expect I had my accent still. And they were all like, 'Yeah, sure!' So we went to talk to Leo and she was like 'Yeah, sure!' and then we went to Jacob and he was like, 'Nope' and we were like 'Okay.' And then we left."

I felt like there were some serious plot holes in this particular part of the story.

"Did you just walk out the front door?" I asked skeptically.

"No," Aven snorted like the idea was ridiculous. "Oh, wait...yeah, we did, actually. Huh." She blinked a few times.

I didn't realize Aven took everything so literally. I'd have to watch my witty sarcasm around her. I might just blow her mind.

"Anyway," she said, flapping her hand again. "The twins wanted to go back to Scotland."

"They were Scottish?" I asked. So many cool accents, so little time.

"Yep, and Leo was Spanish. So, the twins went to Scotland and Leo went to France."

"And you came here?"

"Oh, nope. I went with Leo for a while. Then I went to Portugal, then Spain and Greece, and then Italy and Germany and then I went to Sicily, and then I was in Ireland for a while." She blinked. "I've only been in America for around two and a half years."

Tess looked at Aven, and I could tell she was half-jealous and half-impressed. "All by yourself?"

She nodded. "I got people to pretend to be my parents. Or I just lied flat out. I became a better liar." She grinned, like it was fantastic.

I raised an eyebrow. "In addition to picking locks?"

"Yep."

"Can you teach me?"

"Nico!" Tess elbowed me in the stomach.

I guess I deserved that.

Aven collapsed down the wall like the effort of talking had been too much of her rain, somehow hitting her head on the bar in the process. I heard the _thunk_ all the way across the room, but she didn't notice. "So...yeah. That's basically it."

I looked at Tess. "That was _way_ more than 'I was there, you just never saw me.'"

She rolled her eyes so she didn't have to admit that I was right.

But, really, when am I wrong?

**So, this chapter was more of a I'm-going-to-explain-a-bunch-of-stuff kinda chapter. I didn't realize how much I had to explain! And there is more, but this chapter would have been it's own book.**

**Remember guys! Ideas are encouraged. :)**

**See the button beneath this statement? It's a very important part of the fanfiction experience. Press it.**


	5. Flying Forks and Finger Quotes

**mmmmmm...turkey. **

**Nothing like day old turkey to make Thanksgiving really hit home. Youth convention is tomorrow, and I'm super excited. Um...I kicked myself in the face the other day at dance. And we aren't doing winter guard (sigh). And I wanna learn how to play the guitar, but I don't have a self teach book, which is required. And now I'm about to leave for Youth Convention, and there is an indoor water park! Excitement! AND DOBBY DIED! Oh, I cried.**

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**Flying Forks and Finger Quotes**

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"Ninjas or pirates?"

"What a stupid question."

"Yeah, it's obviously ninjas. That's like asking, 'Google or Yahoo?' Yahoo doesn't stand a chance. Like, ever. It is eternally doomed to sulk in the dark shadow of its competitor as Google radiates happiness and success."

I blinked. "I don't think I've ever heard such a eloquent sentence about the war of Google vs. Yahoo. Really, bravo."

Aven gave me a little bow with her head and continued shoveling spaghetti into her mouth. I often wondered if she had three stomachs. And then, once that had been confirmed, I was left to ponder how she could fit three stomachs in her body when she was the width of a toothpick and about as tall.

Tess sniffed. "I still think it's a stupid question."

Aven opened her mouth as wide as it could go, which was very wide, considering she could eat a hotdog in two bites if she really tried. I'm a witness. "The topic of Ninjas vs. Pirates is an ongoing debate with a tremendous amount of impact on society." Then she looked at me again, seemingly thinking of something else. "Okay, ninjas always win unless the pirate is Orlando Bloom or Johnny Depp. They pwn anyone, regardless of occupation."

"Nicely put."

Tess rolled her eyes, picking at her salad.

Aven knit her eyebrows. "Aren't you going to eat?"

"What's it look like I'm doing?" she snapped. She'd been a little irritable lately. It couldn't have had anything to do with the fact that I was right about Aven, could it?

Food for thought!

"Well..." Aven wrinkled her nose as she began to think. "If I had to guess, I would say you were picking at your salad. But that's a bit boring. Not to mention that salad is insubstantial and offers hardly anything as a food source."

"Well, we can't all have the metabolism of a squirrel."

"Doesn't mean you have to eat like one."

Tess narrowed her eyes. "Squirrels eat nuts."

"A rabbit then." Aven grinned. "I think rabbits would like spaghetti, too."

"Oh, really?" she said skeptically.

"Who _doesn't_ like spaghetti? No one, that's who." Aven crossed her arms and looked proud of herself.

"Why are we even having this conversation?" Tess snapped. "It's absurd."

"You're absurd!" Aven scoffed.

Tess threw a fork at Aven head. Obviously, Tess thought she would dodge. She did not.

The fork hit her in the forehead, pointy part first. What do they call it? Prongs? The prongs made her head bleed.

Aven put her hand up to the point of impact as the metal clattered on the tiled floor. She looked at her fingertips. They were red. She looked at Tess approvingly. "You have quite an arm."

She turned beet red.

"Although I'm not sure throwing forks at innocent people is a good way to sharpen your sniper skills." Aven laughed. "I need a bandage. But my Hello Kitty ones are in my other bag...To the nurse!" She struck a super hero pose, legs shoulder width apart, finger in the air, before running off in a random direction.

As she passed, she grabbed poor Kashton, the gay guy I had seen on my first day, and dragged him away with her, explaining briefly that she had been stabbed with a fork. "So, ninjas or pirates?" was the last thing I could hear before the door to the cafeteria shut behind them.

Tess sulked in her chair.

"Remind me never to make you mad," I told her.

"I thought she would duck."

I raised one eyebrow (I spent all day once trying to figure out how to do it). "We've known her for almost two weeks. She is possibly the clumsiest person I have ever had the misfortune to meet. Dodging projectile forks is not one of her skills."

She didn't respond.

"Of course, she took it rather well. If you stabbed me in the head with a fork I don't think I would have complimented your arm."

"She's nicer than you are."

"Then why did you throw a fork at her?"

"I thought she would duck!"

"It's _Aven!_" There really was no other way to describe it. "She can't walk up the stairs without falling over."

Tess wrinkled her nose. "Dancer's should be more observant."

"I'm sure she pays more attention when she's dancing." Although, thinking back on how she had said hello to the dance floor with her face that one time made me second-guess that statement.

She sighed in resignation. "Things just don't add up." She tore a piece of lettuce absently beneath her fingers.

I shoved half of a hamburger into my mouth. "Like what?" I asked through a mouthful of goodness,

"That's attractive," Tess told me sarcastically.

"Everything I do is attractive. It's about time you noticed." I grinned, wiping away mustard with my sleeve.

"You're such a boy."

"Again, it's about time you noticed." I sipped my soda. Soda + ADHD = Chaos. "What do you mean, 'things don't add up?'"

Tess threw the pieces of leaf on the table exasperatedly. "Aven. It doesn't make sense."

"Aven doesn't make sense," I agreed. "In fact, I think she only says one coherent thing a day."

"That's not what I mean." She rubbed her temples. "If Aven spent so long in that scientist place, what were they researching on her?"

"They might not have been researching anything," I reminded her. But I knew it wasn't true as soon as I said it.

"And she completely skipped over at least six years of her life." Tess continued like she couldn't even hear me.

I motioned for her to be quiet. People were staring, abandoned bits of spaghetti hanging from their mouths as they looked at Tess. "Let's go for a walk."

I got out of my chair, and so did Tess, but she kept talking, hissing her theories in my unwilling ear as we walked down the hallway.

"What happened in those six years that Aven, loud, obnoxious, vociferous Aven, is unwilling to talk about it?"

I snorted. "Vociferous?"

She ignored me. "Think about it. Aven says anything that's on her mind. It's not like her to keep things a secret."

"Wow. You must be a good judge of character," I said, pushing open door so we could walk on the lawn. "Since we've only known her two weeks or so."

"You knew she was clumsy."

"Well, that's a tad bit obvious."

"If you lived with her, this would be obvious too." She sat down heavily on a bench. Evidently, those salads were not working. "I've asked her about it, and the people she was with, and she simply refuses to talk about it. It's almost like it causes her physical pain."

I thought of Bianca. "Maybe it does."

"What could do that to a person?" Tess asked. "I can't imagine feeling so terrible about something."

"What if Cason died?"

She looked at me sharply. "Don't even joke."

"I'm not," I told her quickly. "But if Cason died, don't you think that would, you know, hurt?"

"How would I know?" she snapped again. She seemed to be snappish today. "He hasn't."

"Don't tell me you never thought of it before." I stared up at the sun. So what if I got permanent damage to my eye? I live on the edge. "Stuff like that changes a person."

"And you know this so well?" Tess demanded. "You shouldn't be talking about stuff you don't understand, idiot."

I shrugged and stood up. "Don't listen to me. I'm just a loser who doesn't know what he's talking about," I told her, dusting off the backseat of my pants. It would be easier for her to believe that then for me to have to explain.

"It doesn't matter," she said, dismissing it. "I want to know. I _need_ to know!"

"Since Aven is the only one that knows, I'd start out with asking her." I started back off towards the cafeteria.

"I _have!" _She ran after me. "She says nothing! Absolutely nothing! It's unnatural."

"Are all Athena kids so nosey?" I snipped. Having her poke her nose into Aven's business annoyed me almost as much as it would have if she were butting into mine. "Annabeth sends me here, and now you are worrying about someone else's life. It's none of our business."

"That isn't the way you were looking at it the other day," Tess reminded me, glaring at me with stormy eyes. "You dragged me down the hallway to find out what was going on."

"I..." There was no way, absolutely no way, I was telling Tess Pearson about my terrible feeling. The one that made me nauseous whenever I was alone. "I just lost interest."

"Whatever."

I braced myself and turned around. "We should just leave it alone."

I had not said anything before that had shocked Tess this much.

"That's not like you, di Angelo." Her eyes were wide.

"Really," I insisted. "We shouldn't get involved." But at the same time, an ominous thought ran through my head. _We might not have a choice in the matter._

Tess narrowed her eyes suddenly. "Is something wrong?"

"No."

Luckily, Tess didn't have the appropriate amount of time to get into Interrogation Mode. Aven was running out the door I was holding open and jammed her nose into my shoulder.

"Ow."

There was a bright pink Hello Kitty bandage stuck to her forehead, peeking out like a medal beneath her bangs. "Why, hello friends!"

Tess face transformed from suspicious to guilty in a matter of nano-seconds. I never knew she was such a good actor. "I thought you would duck."

Aven snorted and flapped her hand. "It's alright. I get worse than this in dance. It hardly even hurt." She rubbed her nose and looked up at me, because I was almost a foot taller. "Your shoulder is hard."

I grinned. "I try."

She grinned back, but only for a moment. She turned to Tess. "I'm going for a run. See you." Then she took off down the street.

"See? Isn't that suspicious?" Tess demanded.

"That she's going for a run?" I asked. "Considering that she ate enough for a family of twelve, I don't really think so. Although teenagers and exercise is a weird combination."

"No!" She rolled her eyes. "She couldn't look you in the eye, you idiot."

"You really like that word, don't you?" I walked back into school hallway, closing the door behind.

Tess glared at me before following. "She couldn't."

"Maybe she likes me."

She snorted.

"Gee, thanks." I sighed and turned to look at her, walking backwards. "Look, I think it's better if we aren't involved."

"Are you a hero, or not?"

That brought me up short. I sighed. "Look. If we get involved in Aven's past, we're going to be in a lot of trouble. I don't know what trouble, but it's pretty big. Bigger than this." I motioned to the lockers, the general school building. "Bigger than I care to get into."

"And you know this how?"

Gods, I hate skeptics. "My man gut."

She laughed. "Your man gut? Your _man gut?_" She laughed again.

I frowned and left her laughing in the hallway.

I was doing geometry in my room (who invented this stuff?). The room smelled like paint. Cason had set up his easel on a tarp in the corner. He was lying on his bed, bouncing a ball off of the ceiling.

There was a knock. "Nico! Niconiconiconiconiconico—"

I opened the door.

Aven stood there, waving happily. "Hello!"

"What are you doing here?" I asked harshly. She didn't seem to mind.

"Hi, Cason!" she exclaimed, waving feverishly at Tess's brother like her life depended on it.

"Oh, Aven, hi." He waved at her lazily from his bed. "I was wondering when you would come over here."

She didn't seem to register his statement at all, like the effort of waving her hand so quickly too up all of her capacity to think of anything else. "I saw the painting you did in class last week. It was very nice. Bravo!"

"Aven?" I reminded her.

"Oh, right." She grabbed my hand. "You wouldn't mind coming with me, would you?" As if she would wait for my answer. Before I even registered her question, my wrist was firmly in her grip and we were racing down the hallway.

"What's going on?" I exclaimed apprehensively.

"Oh, do be quiet."

We were outside, by the bench Tess and I had been talking at that morning. Tess was there too, her blonde hair shining in the dark light of the moon. She stood up. "Percy IMed me."

"Why?"

"That's what I asked," Aven told me, grinning. "She wouldn't tell me. So I came to get you so I could hear when she told you. I'm so smart."

"He's coming," Tess told me, ignoring her.

"Percy?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"Tonight."

"What about my stuff?"

"Like you cared about any of it anyway."

"Why? We've only been here two weeks." I didn't sound upset. I was never that good at lying.

"Rachel's been asking for you since yesterday nonstop."

I wasn't excited anymore. "What do you mean?"

"Who's Rachel?" Aven asked, giggling. "You're girlfriend."

Tess looked at the shorter girl sharply. "The Oracle."

She blinked. "Oh. Well, that's not good at all. Oracle's mean prophecies. And prophecies mean quests. And quests mean danger. Danger!"

"Don't think you're going, Blossom," Tess reminded.

Aven looked like someone had stabbed her with a fork again.

"Tess," I warned.

But she was not in a good mood. "You're the one that warned us not to get involved. That her past would come and bite us in the butt. That it was 'bigger than this.'" She even used finger quotes.

I hate finger quotes.

"Are you crazy?" I hissed, looking anxiously at Aven.

She didn't look offended. Curiosity. That was all that I saw. "What do you mean, 'bigger than this?'"

"It's his 'man gut.'"

There were those finger quotes again.

"What put a twist in _your_ toga?" I inquired peevishly.

"Cason's not coming." She stared at me. "He likes this school too much."

"I think you would have, too," Aven said aloud. "If you had the time."

"You're still not going."

"I'm allowed. I'm a half-blood, the same as you," she pointed out.

"But you're 'in hiding.'"

Note to self: Tess uses excessive finger quotes when angry.

Aven looked at her feet. "About that..."

"Were you lying?" her roommate asked hotly. "'Cause that would just totally make my day."

"I wasn't!" she insisted. "I am in hiding. I am. I was."

"Past tense? How much could have possibly changed since then?"

Aven's mint-colored eyes were wide and pleading. "They found me."

Then all Hades broke loose.

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**Hmmm...**

**Don't you just love cliffhangers? **

**I do. Except when I have to wait another year to find out what happens. Darn you, Rick Riordan. You just couldn't let them find him. Darn you.**

**Anyway, at least you guys get a new chapter sooooooonnnnnnnnn. No offense, but Tess annoyed me in this chapter. I was fighting writers block. With a spoon. It isn't going well for me.**

**Same question as always. Tess or Aven? Please, leave your response in the reviews I so kindly appreciate. :) There is this handy little button under this statement. It works rather well.**


	6. Our Little Bundle of Chaos and Trouble

**!**

**Hi there!**

**My name is Doug.**

**My master gave me this collar so that I may**

**SQUIRREL!**

**Hi there!  
**

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**_Our Little Bundle of Chaos and Trouble_**

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Catastrophe #1) the school exploded.

I was there for two weeks, _two weeks,_ and already the school lays in shambles and heaps of rocks at me feet. That has to be some sort of demigod record. Obviously, I'm just as awesome as I always knew I was.

And that's pretty awesome.

My ADHD brain had only a nanosecond or two to process before something tackled my legs. Tess thudded heavily down to the ground beside me, her nose buried in dirt. Aven huffed, laying half on top of us. She did so just in time. A flying piece of glorified firewood shattered the bench I had been about to sit on into rubble.

I stared at it, pointed dazedly. "That could have been my head."

Aven rolled off of us, sitting back on her haunches, like a cat, her eyes unusually bright in the darkness, wide like dinner plates and wild. "Is everyone alright?" she inquired worriedly. "No one is bleeding, right? Because I have Hello Kitty Band-Aids, if you need them. You don't need them, right?"

I'm not sure how much of that Tess heard. She was staring at the remainder of the school, horrified, peeking out from behind the bush that offered us so little protection. She was probably shocked someone would dare to destroy a school building, which was almost as holy as a temple. To her, at least.

The wall to our left was a heap of pebbles that could have been bricks a moment ago. A pillar of black smoke rose sluggishly through the dark sky like molasses, casting eerie shadows in the moonlight. Fire licked stone. Kids ran out of the doors screaming hysterically, throwing their arms above their heads frantically in a fashion I would laugh about later. Some were half-dressed ( I saw way more than I needed to see). Some waved toothbrushes around in their hands, toothpaste foaming around their mouths like blue rabies.

Tess's horrified mouth dropped open, making a perfect _O _in her disbelief. Her eyes were teary. Right when we were sure she was going to say something heart wrenching, she wailed like a banshee. "My _stuff._"

Aven blinked at her.

"Are you kidding me?" I asked incredulously. "The school just blew up!"

"Those are our dorms, Nico!"

Suddenly, Aven's green eyes were sharp. I knew she was thinking the same thing I was. _If those are our dorms, they're other people's dorms, too. _"What if there were people up there?"

Tess fumbled in her back pocket and pulled out a wadded piece of paper, a bright green and blue flier with huge letters even a dyslexic could read. _**Come to Willington Park! It's Party Time!**_ There was a strange picture of a rollercoaster with a clown in it, holding a bad of cotton candy. Which they totally don't allow. "The park is free tonight, for the kids from the Arts Department. Almost everyone in our duplex is there."

"I never got that."

"Yes," she said, irritated. "You did. This is yours. You made it into a paper airplane and crashed it into my mashed potatoes."

"Oh, right." I remembered. "I was reenacting _Lost."_

"How exactly did that end, anyway?" Aven asked, rubbing her shoulders. Her arms were covered in goosebumbs. She was only wearing a fitted t-shirt and baggy sweat pants that meant she was either really fat at one point or bought them three sizes too big. But it wasn't cold out side, not at all. Crazy Florida winters.

"You okay?"

"I have a bad feeling."

"A bad feeling?" scoffed Tess. "A _bad feeling?_ The school just blew up! Like, _ka-boom!_ And my research paper for history is gone! And my guitar. Oh my gods, my guitar!" She was about to break down, but then her eyes narrowed. "Cason."

We all looked up at the window to what had been my room. It was nearly destroyed. Not on fire, but not quite a room anymore. Cason waved a white arm at us, covered in soot and coughing up smoke. But the explosion had come from the girl's side. From Tess's room. No, maybe not. From Aven's.

_They found me_.

They found her.

Man, I wish I had gone to Willington Park.

Then it hit me. Hard. With a rock.

"Watch out."

"You know, Tess, I think it might be a little late for the warning." I turned around and scowled. Someone stood a few yards away, wearing something blazing white that meant that he couldn't possibly have been in the explosion.

"Buzz off." His voice was unnaturally loud in the chaos.

"You just hit me in the head with a rock."

"Not hard."

"Who are you?"

I needed a nap. My anger was about to snap. Now, normally, I'm a pretty awesome person. Okay, I'm always an awesome person. But this guy hit me with a rock. A nice, "Go away" would have sufficed. Tess took a step back, I took a step forward, and Aven took off in a running sprint.

In the wrong direction.

"Hey!" she shouted, arms flailing in the darkness. "Hey! Stop! Come back! _Come back!_"

The guy took off running too, away from the crazy, spastic looking girl who ran towards him. "You'll have to run faster than that, Blossom. Much faster!" It sounded like a demented game of tag. Only with a burning building in the background, fire making unnatural shadows and crackling manically.

"For once, just once, can't I have a _normal _Monday?" I screamed. Tess took another step back.

"Nico?" she asked in a shaky voice. "Something is coming."

I didn't hear her then. "Come on." I ran off towards the two others.

"Nico, _something is coming."_

"And we are leaving!" I grabbed her hand, and even though she gasped indignantly, I dragged her along behind me. For someone so unreasonably thin, she was really heavy.

Aven and the boy were disgustingly far ahead of us, little white dots that could have been people or sheep. They were moving unnaturally fast, and Aven was closing in. They disappeared, over the hill they had been quickly climbing. The last thing I could see was Aven, taking a giant leap, tackling his legs like she had done to the two of us five minutes ago, throwing him onto the ground, and rolling to the base of the miniature mountain the rest of the way.

"I'm tired, Nico." Tess was slowing down.

"Shut up."

"You shut up."

We were standing at the top of the hill. Actually, we were heaving, bent over double and clutching our aching sides from the effort. I'm lazy. And out of shape. Running doesn't suit me any more than school or education does.

But we could see and hear them, if we tried really hard. That's all I needed to make it worth it. Anyone who hits me in the handsome head with a rock deserves a beating.

"You grew up, little B." His tone was not one that I liked. It was cocky and too...not nice.

"You did too," Aven sighed, rubbing her leg. They must have been cramping. I'd never seen anyone run that fast in my entire life. "You're all beefy. Still beautiful, though."

We weren't close enough, but I could hear his smirk in his voice. "I was made that way."

Tess strained her neck, squinting her eyes and looking ridiculous, trying to get a better view. She fell back down the grass. "He's gorgeous."

"Typical. Now shut up."

"You shut up."

"Is that, like, the only thing you can say?"

She glared at me, but she was still heaving and way too exhausted to say anything of substance.

"—you doing here?" Aven was saying, not quite accusingly.

"I came to get you." He took a step forward. Aven stood still, supposedly at ease. But there was something weird about how she was standing, like at any moment she might reach out and attack just as soon as she would run away. He knew that, and didn't push his luck by coming closer. "To take you home."

"You took away my home." Aven hugged herself and shivered. However, unlike the man in white, her voice was pleasant and conversational. Not much different than the one she had been using before the school exploded. Quite the feat. Or maybe it didn't register in her mess of a brain that this was a bad thing.

School exploding? Bad.

Strange man with an apparent relationship with Aven coming to "take her home"? Also bad. Very, very bad.

"What about the others?" she asked. "Are they there, too?"

"We had trouble finding them all, but yes. They agreed. It's the right thing to do. You know that. They do too."

Aven looked up at the hill we were hiding behind, like she knew we were there and was looking for something from us. "Liar."

"I miss you, B," he told her, and it was strangely sincere. "Don't leave me again. I missed you for five years."

She looked at him with a sad shake of her head, like you would look at a child who said he wanted cake for diner. "It's not like we didn't give you choice to come with us. You didn't just turn us down, J." She said something else, but it was hard to hear her anyway, and there was a gust of wind that made eavesdropping momentarily impossible,

"Come with me, Blossom." He completely ignored whatever it was that she had said.

She shook her head. "I'm never going back there. Why do think I made it so hard to find me?"

"You're coming with me, B. Whether you like it or not."

Tess, still lying on the ground, pulled at the leg of my pants. "Something is coming, Nico." She was whispering. "Nico?"

"_What?_"

"It's here."

I saw it too. "Well, that isn't good at all."

It snarled.

I turned around and shouted. "AVEN!" I didn't see what she did in response before turning around again.

Percy had told me about it. That nasty, disgusting, dangerous thing he had met in on his first time out in the real world. We joked about his rotten luck. Heck, we joked about Percy all the time.

But with a giant, fire breathing, lion headed, snake butted thing with a goat in the middle staring at you in the face and flicking fire, it isn't so funny.

See, to help my fellow man, I've been making a list of things to do (or not to do) so that you won't die an early death.

Helpful Hint #34) don't meet a Chimera.

And that, dear readers, would be Catastrophe #2.

"We are so dead." Tess put her hands together in prayer. "Dear Mom, if I die right now, I'm dead and can't pay back Annabeth's twenty bucks. You don't want me to die in debt, do you?"

"Move!" I shouted, tackling her to the ground. Fire charred the grass around us. "And the gardeners worked so hard on that."

The shaft of an arrow whistled through the air and hit the Chimera through its fire breathing muzzle, like a really awkward and uncomfortable looking nose-ring. All it did was make him really, really angry. "Why?" Aven shouted at no one over her shoulder, running up the hill. I was half expecting her to fall down. "Why can't you just leave me alone?" But the dude in white was gone.

I pulled out my sword from the shadows. The iron glinted menacingly in the moonlight. I jabbed at the snakehead, hesitantly. Keeping track of the mouth and the butt at the same time is a lot of work. Tess squirmed away from the tail. I threw her a stick. "Athena doesn't care about Annabeth's twenty dollars. _Get the heck up!_"

Another arrow sprouted, puncturing his ear. He reared. I dropped down, lowering my center of gravity like I had been taught. It growled, spitting fire, and I could feel the hairs on my arm charring into nothing, even though I dodged (sorta). I'm pretty sure I now only have one eyebrow. The sleeve of my shirt caught fire. Tess started beating the snakehead with a stick ("_Die!_").

"Hit the deck!" Aven shouted, suddenly right behind me. If I had any kind of need to pee my pants at that moment, it would have happened. She had not been there three seconds ago. She had four arrows notched on her green bow. Two bounced off harmlessly, snapping in half when the Chimera stepped on them and made them pancakes. One skimmed his hide. The last one embedded itself into the monsters paw. He roared, and she had to dodge a wave of fire.

"Do you like my gift?" the boy said out of nowhere. His voice was echoing, bouncing everywhere. There was absolutely no way to know where he was. "I borrowed him from Enchidna."

"You have _no Christmas spirit!"_ she shouted, shoving an arrow up the things nose when it charged, getting in too close for her to shoot. The bottom of her shirt was black and charred. A flash of gray came out of nowhere. The Chimera recoiled, stopping his attack on Aven in his surprise.

A wolf snarled at it. Two more came out of the woods that surround the clearing.

Tess stood halfway behind me, clutching her stick in white-knuckled hands. It was painted gold with Ichor. "How'd you manage that? Are there even wolves here normally?"

Aven grimaced. It looked weird on her, like her face had never contorted itself in that way. She made eye contact with the gray wolf we had seen first. She broke it off first, grabbing our hands urgently and racing into the woods they had come out of. The sudden change of scenery didn't register at first. I vaguely registered that I was moving.

Then I really realized I was moving.

"Whoa! Wait, where are we going?"

"They're buying us time."

"Who is?" I wasn't stupid enough to stop moving, but I was really confused.

"The wolves. They're going to buy us time until we can get to the precipice."

"The _what?_"

"Really. Are questions the only thing your little brain can manage?"

This sounded more like a Tess comment than one you would normally hear from Aven. But something wet hit my cheek. She was crying. It was almost as weird to see as her grimacing. She looked at me, sniffed, and looked forward again, clawing at her face to wipe away the tears. I knew what she was sad about. _The wolves are probably going to die._

But the whole idea of a precipice, when mentioned in any conversation while your life is in danger, if one that most people avoid. Normal people do not run toward the precipice. The precipice is a bad thing to run toward. A very bad thing.

But Aven was barreling forward, jumping over logs and swerving around trees with a strange determination that Tess and I were having a lot of trouble keeping up. I was waiting for her to go sprawling like she did whenever she climbed the stairs at school. But everything about her was different. She seemed older and wearier, like she had lived a thousand lives. Like she did sometimes when she was completely enveloped in what she was doing, like she didn't have the attention span to keep it hidden and dance or read at the same time. But she winced every time she took a single step. When she ran it was lopsided, like her left leg couldn't quite handle her weight.

The woods were creepily silent. Every animal had disappeared. I don't blame them. But every time a twig snapped or a leave rustled in the wind, I almost fainted. All that I could hear was our footsteps on the ground and heavy breathing.

Then the trees started to thin out, and everything started going from green to brown and then to a sandy yellow. I stepped on more rocks and tripped over less tree roots. There was growling behind us. I didn't think it was the wolves coming back for a dog biscuit or something.

"Okay, Aven, what's the game plan?" Tess asked. "Personally, I don't think we have any chance what so ever. And since running away didn't work...maybe we should just keep it at bay until Percy comes."

"Percy met the Chimera once," I blurted.

"How did he get away?"

"He jumped off of the St. Lewis Arch."

"Oh, good." Aven looked more like herself now, brushing her bangs back from her sweaty forehead. "So it worked before. Great minds think alike."

"What do you mean?" Tess looked horrified.

"You're a smart girl, Tess. You can work it out." Aven hiked up her sweat pants and tucked her hair behind her ears, grasping out wrists with renewed strength.

"No," Tess said, almost daring Aven to confirm what was dawning on the two of us. "Oh, Hades, no."

She just smiled and took off running, dragging us behind her for, oh, I don't know, the fiftieth time that night.

"No!" screamed our blonde friend shrilly, digging her heels into the dirt. She was no match for Aven.  
"No, oh, no. No. No no no nonononnon_ononononononono!"_

She looked at the shorted girl helplessly. "You're crazy."

"Only on Tuesday's."

Then we jumped.

The next, oh, five, ten seconds of my life were some of the most terrifying. I admit it. This devilishly handsome main character screamed like a girl. Or maybe it was Tess. Our voices all mixed together in to some weird, deafening scream that I could hear for three days afterward. Aven looked more like she was on a rollercoaster, even if she was terrified. At first, Tess could actually make something coherent come out of her mouth. "Oh my _gooooooooodddddddddddssssssss!"_ But eventually we were all spluttering gibberish in a girly falsetto.

Something fastened itself around my leg. I thought it was Tess or Aven, until I saw it was yellow. And a talon. It pulled me up. I was hanging upside down, and the sudden change in direction almost pulled my entire leg out of he socket it belonged to. There was a rush of wind near my face. Wings beat.

I was attached to a very large eagle.

And when I say large, I mean almost as big as my cabin at camp.

Tess hung, wide eyed, from the claw next to me.

Aven was crying in happiness, smiling even before her own eagle came in to swoop her up. "Hello, there. I'm so glad to see you."

"You mean they might not have come?" called Tess. "And you jumped off the cliff anyway?"

"It was either that or get killed by a fire breathing monster. And I heard that this was a very quick was to die." Her voice cracked. "I'm so tired."

"Nico!"

That voice was undoubtedly male.

"Percy!"

"So, hang out here often?" he called, grinning lopsidedly.

"We don't have time for your cheesy jokes. The blood is rushing to my head."

Aven waved at him enthusiastically. "I almost died," she declared proudly. "But I didn't. I'm so amazing." She looked up at the eagle. "You can drop me off here."

She landed with a thud on the floor of the chariot Percy was driving, the Pegasi flapping their wings to keep them in place.

"Um...yeah," I said, knocking on the claw like you would on a door. "You can drop me off here, too."

And he did. Not too gently, either.

I groaned. "Ouch."

Tess rubbed her back and scowled. Her landing hadn't really been any better. "So rude."

"They did save our lives," I pointed out.

"I'm alive," Aven giggled. "I'm not dead."

"You know," I started. "I'm beginning to think the only ay to get away from that thing is to jump off of stuff."

Helpful Hint #57) jump off of as many things as possible.

Percy raised an eyebrow, flicking the horses into movement. "You know, I think I'm not going to ask. I feel like I would only get really confused."

"Oh, Percy?" Tess started. Aven was still lying on the floor, heaving from her run. Tess picked p her hand and made her wave. "This is our little package of chaos and trouble. Say hello."

Aven flapped her hand pathetically. "Does anyone have any chocolate?"

**So, I really doubt that there is anywhere in Florida that had a school next to a clearing, next to a forest, next to a giant cliff that's just perfect for jumping off of. If there is one, let me know. Anyway...sorry for not updating. I was busy trying to make Callie update. It's a work in progress.**

**You guys should review. It might help me update faster. :)  
**


	7. Dead Girls and Ominous Prophecies

**Oh no! The Narshlogs got Charlie. Quick, grab onto our tongues!**

It was hazy and dark and dry, like the world of nightmares. There was no sun. No stars. No moon. When I walked, or shifted nervously on my feet, little clouds of smoke rose up, like shadows was turning into vapor. It was depressing, and also depressingly familiar.

Home, sweet home.

The Land of the Dead.

Aren't I a lucky boy?

But this was not my father's doing. When dad called, I was brought into his throne room, a giant, creepy looking replica of what Olympus looked like before we trashed it with our fighting to save the world and whatnot, remade in obsidian and dead souls.

As you can imagine, I don't spend a lot of time there.

It was weird. The Fields of Asphodel were teeming with dead souls, chattering away, telling you about their families and all of the great or not-so-great deeds they did in life, their regrets, like saying aloud them again and again might make them, I don't know, not dead or something. Make them feel. It didn't.

It just annoyed the crap out of me.

But it was completely solitary. Imagine a giant black hole, but with one handsome demigod standing in the middle, really confused. I was completely alone in the dark. Again.

Only I wasn't really alone. There was somewhere else there, only they were dead. The dead do not make great company. Why, you ask? See above.

"Hello?"

No one answered.

I stood for a few more minutes, whistling, hands in pockets. "Anybody home? I know you're there. I don't do autographs, sorry."

"Really?" someone asked dryly.

I shrugged. "You'd be surprised how much it happens."

"I bet I would. I'm surprised it happens at all." She laughed. Someone walked towards me in the darkness, and like a foggy picture clearing up on a camera, I could see a girl, maybe Percy's age.

She was wearing what looked like a nightgown, white and lacy. She would have looked rather fancy, but her hair was thrown up haphazardly in a ponytail that reminded me of Aven. Her hair was dark, her nose was sharply pointed, her mouth was set in what seemed to be a perpetual smirk, and her eyebrows were upturned, what usually betrayed someone as a child of Hermes.

We stood there, looking at each other, awkwardly. I was waiting for her to be _polite _and introduce herself. She did not.

"And you are?"

"You're a little testy, aren't you?"

I scowled. "I'm in a random place when I should be sleeping. I'm talking to a random dead girl. I just got rid of a random guy in a white shirt and his bloodthirsty fire-breathing goat thing. I've had better days."

She cocked her head to the side. "I'm Bo." Her voice was sharp and clear, muddied only by an accent that sounded vaguely Italian.

"Bo...?"

"Just Bo."

"Right," I said slowly. "What do you want with one dashing son of Hades?"

"Me?" Bo laughed bitterly. "I want nothing of you. The deceased have little to desire. I'm just a messenger for someone else."

"'That person being who?"

"'That person being _whom._"

"Who is Whom?"

"I was correcting your grammar." Bo sighed.

"Why?"

"It needed to be corrected."

"Please, woman. Make some sense before I kill you again."

"Actually, that's impossible, beca—"

"You know, funnily enough, I don't care." I scratched my head. "Just tell me what I'm doing here so that I can go back to my beauty sleep."

"You need it." Bo smiled.

"Har-har. I'm leaving." She laughed, and then I realized I had no idea where I was in Hades, or how I could get out. Touché, Mystery Dead Girl. Touché. "Okay, well, that plan was a failure. What do you want?"

"I want nothing of you. The deceased have little to de—"

"Yeah, yeah. I get it. Explain."

"It's Show and Tell, not Tell and Show."

"Did you just make a joke?"

Before she could respond, if she had wanted to, everything dissolved. Darkness was replaced by light so fast I'm pretty sure my eyes got whiplash. I was surrounded by children.

I do not like children. Especially not crying children. Their noses were red, and their eyes were puffy and watery. Two boys, wearing flowing white, not unlike Bo. One, red haired like fire, stood in the corner, fists clenched, about to pummel the wall into submission. His twin, hair equally shocking and about five times messier, sat Indian style on the ground by his feet, half-heartedly typing something on his laptop while tears dribbled onto his keyboard. They were eight-ish. The one sitting was still slightly plump with baby fat, like all kids his age. The other had significantly less extra weight.

Bo stood next to me, looking pale in the harsh light. Not in a ghosty kind of way, but like she had been in darkness for so long that any kind of light bleached her of any color she had. Even her hair seemed lighter. Her arms were crossed tightly over her chest.

Then two more came in, girls this time, one with a comforting arm around the other. They were wearing dresses, replica's of the Ghost Girl's beside me. They were younger than the other two, if only by a year or so. The one being comforted was ridiculously cute, with big, cloudy blue eyes and a huge mane of reddish gold hair. I don't even like kids. Hers eyes were red, but she wasn't crying, keeping in tears by sheer willpower. Her face was steely, which was disconcerting considering she was like, six. But her eyes were heavily lidded, like she was about to fall asleep.

The other one was tanned, brown haired, small boned, and green eyed. She looked devastated, and her eyes were rimmed with the telltale pinkish red color, but her nose wasn't snotty, and her jaw wasn't clenched, and her eyes certainly looked dry, like she had pulled herself together only seconds before. She looked like someone who had cried herself out along time ago and accepted the sadness as a part of life.

What the heck was wrong with these kids?

But she looked familiar. I couldn't think of whom.

"This is all their fault!" screamed the non-chubby redhead in the corner. "They killed her! They killed her! She's gone forever." His voice reminded me of the smallest hobbit in Lord of the Rings. The red haired one. Pippin.

His brother's computer beeped mournfully.

The girl who had the blonde hair sniffed. "Where is Jacob?" her voice was a strange mixture of accents, like she couldn't decide which one she wanted to use.

The brunette looked at the door they had just entered. "Punching a tree, I think, when I last saw him." British.

The blonde one fell to the floor, moaning. "She's gone. They blew her up." Her voice was a breathless whisper.

"Leo," her friend tried, patting her awkwardly on the shoulder in a less-than-comforting way. She stood above her, small and uncomfortable looking, like she wasn't sure how to deal with a crying girl. "It's all right."

Leo's eyes flared like deadly fireworks. "What's wrong with you, Blossom? How can you say it's all right? It's not all right! It's terrible! This is terrible!"

The name seemed familiar, too.

Blossom shrank back, cringing. Then she fell to the floor too, sitting on her knees. "She's gone. She isn't going to come back. Crying won't help." She sniffed, trying to take her own advice.

"It makes me feel better," Leo snapped.

"You don't look like you're in good shape to me." It wasn't a comeback. Only a statement. "Death is important. It isn't really an end, if you live right." She looked at Leo pointedly, wrinkling her nose. "You of all people should know that."

"She was nine!" shouted Leo, turning on the smaller girl. "Nine! Too young."

"You were only ten when you first died."

I thought it might be better for my sanity if I didn't pay attention to that.

"It's different! I'm different."

"How so?" Blossom was curious.

"She would rather have died than go through with this," said the boy with the computer. He seemed Scottish, like his brother.

"Shut up."

"No need to be hurtful." The boy sniffed, partly sucking up snot, partly indignant. Then he said, in a small voice, "I'd rather die than go through with this."

"Don't say that!" Blossom insisted. "What do they say...Be careful what you wish for."

"What do you wish for?" asked Leo. "A pony and world peace?" Leo's humor was not the humor of a seven-year-old. It was hard and sarcastic.

"Nope," said Blossom, her soft voice ringing with finality. "Just something better than this. Maybe one day, I'll get it. We'll all get it."

She looked toward the door. "Jacob is taking it hard."

"They were pretty close," said the boy with the computer. His brother glowered at the wall like he could melt it with his eight-year-old glare.

"I hope he is okay." Blossom nibbled on her lip.

"What's with you and being okay?" asked the standing boy harshly.

She looked at him, eyebrows knitted in distress, seriously trying to think about it. "It's better to be okay. Much better. I would rather be okay than not be okay, wouldn't you?"

"But being okay right now isn't acceptable," said his brother.

"Why?" Blossom looked confused, head cocked to the side.

"It just isn't."

"That's a stupid reason."

"You asked a stupid question."

"She wouldn't want us to mourn for her. I bet she is watching us from heaven."

"There isn't a heaven," said Leo firmly. "Just Hades."

"For her, it will be heaven," Blossom told her, just as firmly but impossibly soft, like she was embarrassed to insist on it too loudly. "It will be. For her."

It dissolved into smoke again. Bo sighed. She'd only been getting more and more tense.

"What was that?" I asked hesitantly.

She looked at me with chilly eyes. "My funeral."

"I died when I was nine," Bo told me. "Executed. Killed. Murdered. Eradicated. Slaughtered. Exterminated. Slay-"

"By who?" I interjected. Something told me she would go on for days. Or at least a long time.

"By the Academy. L'Académie. La Academia. Yr Academi."

"You mean, like, where Aven is from?"

"Aven?" Bo raised an eyebrow. "I knew her as Blossom."

"You _knew _her?" My voice was an octave higher than normal. That's embarrassing. "The _Academy_?"

"Her mother can't interfere directly." She smirked a little. "Since meddling is one of my multiple specialties, she sent me to interfere as much as I please."

"Interfere?" I asked. "With what?"

"With you. With what you're about to do."

"And you know this how?" Especially since I didn't know myself. Tess had told me that Percy told her that Rachel had been asking for me. With running for my life and whatnot, the fact had conveniently slipped my mind. It struck me with renewed anxiety.

"You require Blossom/Aven to be with you."

"Why would I need her?" Silence.

That came out harder than I meant it to, but it was the truth. The jumping off of the cliff into the claws of eagles was pretty cool, but so far, Aven was a clumsy optimist. My two least favorite things.

"Without her, you're doomed to failure." Bo looked me in the eyes, dark to dark. "Without you, so is she. Without the three of you, the entire world will fall into chaos."

"You've been spending too much time with our friends on Olympus," I snapped at her. "You're even starting to talk like them."

She ignored me. "If you fail, so do we all."

Someone kicked my side gently. "Nico?"

I mumbled something incoherent as a response.

"It's all right," I heard someone say cheerfully. "I've been getting him out of bed for years."

"Ah!" Water drenched me from head to toe.

"Good morning!" said Tess snidely, peering down at me as I spluttered on the bottom of the chariot. "Percy woke you up for us."

"Pleasure to be of service." He mock saluted her and hoped off onto the grassy hillside. Aven was gone. Tess held out a hand to help me up.

"Home, sweet home, no?" she said, running a hand through her hair. It was streaked with black ash, so it looked like she had gone punk rocker on us, and her makeup was running pretty bad. "Now, someone give a shower and a Tylenol. I got a migraine from cliff-jumping."

I looked at Percy. "Sorry we dragged along someone else."

"S'okay." He shrugged amiably. "We were supposed to take Cason as well, but he missed the train, so to speak. We had room." Percy patted one of the Pegasus. "So, what tomfoolery have you gotten yourself into?" He grinned lopsidedly.

I thought about Bo, and Aven, and Rachel, and I said the only thing I was absolutely sure about. "I have no idea."

"Yeah? Well, you look like crap."

"Thanks?"

He threw me an orange Camp Half-Blood shirt. It hit me in the face. My shirt was shredded and scorched, and the new one smelled so strongly of lilac fabric softener I almost keeled over.

"You have to look presentable for Rachel," he said, waving over his shoulder. I could make out a blonde head at the bottom of the hill that looked like Annabeth. "You still have a few more hours of peace until it's Oracle time. Good luck."

I stepped off of the chariot and set off for my cabin. It was dark and messy. Just the way I had left it. Ten minutes after I had changed and ran my fingers through my hair in a halfhearted attempt to get it to behave, someone knocked on the door.

"Who is it?"

"Me."

"That's descriptive."

"Excuse me. Lady Aven Marissa Arnett, occupant of Camp Half-Blood, at your service." She opened the door and peered inside. "You're decent, aren't you?"

"I'm pretty sure you're supposed to ask that _before_ you look inside. Otherwise it kind of defeats the purpose." I sat on the bed.

She raised an eyebrow at my shirt. I sighed. "I really am more of a winter." Bright colors do not suit me. Although, I can pull off anything.

"I don't know anyone who can wear orange and not look like a pumpkin," she said sympathetically. Aven looked at me awkwardly. "So, who is Rachel?"

"The Oracle."

"And if she is asking for you...that's bad?"

"Depends on what you consider 'bad.'"

She smiled.

I though of Bo, looking at her funeral as they all cried. And then I thought of what she said at the end. _If you fail, so do we all._

"Aven?" I asked. "What exactly were they experimenting on?"

"What do you mean?"

"At the Academy. You were experiments, right? What were you for?"

She looked thoughtfully at her feet. "For world domination." Aven smiled at me, laughing slightly. It was hard to tell if she was joking or not. "Anyway, on a totally unrelated and slightly less uncomfortable note," she started again, and I could feel my ears get hot. Slightly. Just a little bit. Men do not blush, "Chiron sent me to fetch you. It's time for dinner."

"But Percy said I had a few hours!" I protested, looking at my watch. I sighed. It was a lot later than I had thought. Funny how time flies. "Liar." I shoved my way out of the door, pushing past Aven as she giggled behind me.

Tess waved from the Pavilion, her arms arching in the dark 6 o' clock light of winter. "It's about time you got here," she said.

"Yes! I'm very hungry," lamented Aven, dancing her way into the cafeteria. She didn't go sit with the Hermes kids. She sat at a ridiculously small table in the corner, filled with five or six other girls and boys. The girls all wore ponytail and sneakers, and the boys were all very tall and broad shouldered.

"She was claimed?" I asked. Tess looked at me like I was an idiot.

"She was claimed a long time ago," she said. "She just never told us. Her mom is Cybele, I think she said."

I looked at her blankly. "Who?"

Tess raised an eyebrow and sighed, like she had known I was this stupid and was upset at herself for ever thinking otherwise. "A minor goddess, one of caverns, mountains, walls, fortresses, nature, and wild animals, particularly lions and sometimes bees."

"A goddess of _walls_?"

She stepped hard on my foot and stalked off to the Athena table.

While I nursed my foot, and my slightly wounded ego, I stumbled over to the Hades table and plopped down on my familiar little bench, my only meal-time companion. I waited anxiously for the food to be served, but Chiron had to go and ruin it by standing up and welcoming us. He should know by now.

No kid cares when he is hungry. You'd think centuries of teaching would help him understand.

"I'd like to welcome back Miss Tess Pearson and Mr. Nico di Angelo, who have returned to us." He smiled at us. I looked pointedly at the table, where food should have been and yet was not. He didn't get the message. "And we would like to greet Miss Aven Arnett, who they have brought back with them."

A few scattered cheers. An Ares kid shouted, "Get on with it!" and I silently agreed.

Mr. D. grumbled. "Yes, yes, welcome Evan. I'd like to eat a bit before they start making my life a misery again."

Aven's eyebrows went up, and Percy shot her a grin from across the room.

Dionysus raised his hands, preparing to clap annoyingly and bring out the food, but Rachel raced through the marble pillars before he had the chance.

Rachel was an unthreatening, artistic, slightly nutty girl. The look on her eyes, however, looked old and more than slightly nutty.

I huffed at the place where my plate would have been. "Will I be doomed to starve forever?" Being one of the only ones cool enough to joke at a time like this, my voice echoed in a respectful silence.

She gripped my shoulder with an unreasonably strong hand, digging her stubby fingernails into my skin. Her eyes were like radioactive waste, the kind that comes in those huge barrels, green and glowing. Something smoky poured out of her mouth, and I checked my pocket to see if I had any gum to give her later.

_The Owl, the Betrayed, and the King of the Ghosts,_

_Shall cross the sea to meet a devilish host._

_An Angel of Nothing from nothing shall call,_

_And the last choice is hers, or death to us all._

The light in her eyes faded slowly, ebbing out of her. And then, like it had been the only thing holding her up, she collapsed, her fingers leaving my skin, and I struggled to catch her.

Everything had been quiet. Now everything jumped and started yelling. I dumped Rachel unceremoniously on the bench next to me, and Percy hopped over to try to wake her up.

"Why does he get the quest?" asked an Ares kid. "He doesn't even want it." His table started roaring.

Tess stood up on the table and quieted the discussion. "If any of you want to know, ask _her_," she said, jerking a finger at Rachel, who was coming around. Annabeth was constantly prodding her, trying to wake her. "Then, maybe she can deal you your own prophecy. Maybe, if you're lucky, you'll get one like Percy's, which almost always ensures your death. Suck it up!" she shouted, sounding like a drill sergeant. They were quiet.

I raised my hand, and Chiron nodded at me dubiously. "Do I have to leave now, or can I eat first?"

**That was sooooooooooooooo long. So long. Twelve pages. Do you guys love me or not? I think you do.**

**Review. Aven would appreciate it greatly. It's just this little button right...**

**Here.**


	8. How to Survive an Awkward Conversation

**When you go after honey with a balloon, the great thing is not to let the bees know you're coming.**

**If you tell me what this quote is from, congratulations. You get 500 awesome points...**

**And not much else. :)**

**Let me tell you about my life now! I found a book on Rick Riordan's recommendation list called The Recruit that I've been dying to read. I ordered it on Barnes and Noble but it wont be here for a week! What's up with that? If anyone has read it, tell me what you think. I'd hate to be disappointed.**

**I'd also like to thank BrightBlueConverse for giving me a fantastic shout out and basically entertaining during the Christmas season. Also Calliope Muse for being my sorta kinda beta, and EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO REVIEWED! I'd say you by name, but I'm too lazy to check and this authors note is too long anyway.**

**Rant over.**

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**_ How to Survive an Awkward Conversation_**

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Alas, as I am sure you were wondering, I did not get to eat my food. My plate remained empty, and it seemed that no one else was hungry. They were all too busy either wishing me good luck or telling me they hope I never come back. It was a good ten minutes before anyone could spare the brain cells to get anything done.

I need food!

"Come on," said Chiron, trotting over. "Cabin leaders, to the Big House." He picked me up with embarrassing ease and threw me over his back. I was dragged from my food by force. I'm pretty sure this was a conspiracy.

Annabeth and Percy handed off Rachel to a boy from Apollo and went off together to Annabeth's cabin, probably to get her plans and stuff.

I felt like an idiot, lying on top of Horse Man as he trotted along to the Big House. He smelled like some kind of frilly fabric softener and the stables. It was a really awkward mixture of smells. When he dumped me on the porch of the Big House, I felt like I needed to take a shower in Old Spice to regain my manhood.

I am the man your man could smell like...

I watch too much television.

Someone screamed from inside. I would have run in and struck a quick heroic pose to see which lovely damsel was in need of my services, you know, rescuing or something like that. _But,_ I had to wait for Chiron to squeeze himself in through the door, so I lost time. Darn horse is ruining my average.

It was a false alarm. Aven was standing in front of the television screen, a Wii remote in her hand, doing a little dance.

It wasn't a scream of terror. It was a scream of victory.

A little boy with glasses hit his fist on his knee. "Dang it!"

She flopped back down on the couch beside him and looked at him solemnly. "What you need are cheat codes, motor skills, and a genie who grants wishes to little boys who suck at Mario Kart."

"Aven?"

She jerked herself back up off of the couch again so quickly I was sure she would fall over. She tottered dangerously before regaining what little balance she had.

The cabin leader who looked most like Aven, a fine boned (like Aven) and tall (not like Aven) girl with a long ponytail and tattered jeans stood with her hands on her hips easily. "How long have you been here?" I tried my hardest to remember her name. I was pretty sure she was the one who punch and Ares kid in the gut a week before I left for Avery, but she didn't look very aggressive. I guess you never know.

"Since Toddy told me to stop singing Disney songs or go somewhere else." She sniffed. "I was just in the middle of Zero to Hero. He couldn't really have expected me to stop."

I had a momentary lapse in judgment and asked, "Which one is that?"

Aven opened her mouth and wailed.

"_Bless my soul,__  
__Herc was on a roll!__  
__Person of the week in every Greek opinion poll!__  
__What a pro!__  
__Herc could stop a show!__  
__Point him at a monster and you're talking SRO__  
__He was a no one__  
__A zero, zero!__  
__Now he's a honcho__  
__He's a hero!"_

"Aven!"

She blinked at me and looked guilty. "Oh, I'm sorry." She held out the Wii remote to me. "Did you want to play?"

The eleven year old with the glasses looked at me mournfully. "She's beating me to a pulp."

Chiron walked over and looked at the two of them. "Time for the two of you to go, I think."

"Thank the gods," said Mr. D, walking into the room, empty Diet Coke can in hand. "Oh, wait. That's me." He settled himself snuggly (and I say that, I meant he bent the chair) at the table and refilled the Coke can.

The kid looked about to say something, but Aven just shrugged. "Nice to meet you!" she said, waving at him and walking out the door, Glasses Boy in tow.

"She's an interesting soul," said Annabeth, sitting down next to Percy at the ping-pong table.

"That's putting it nicely," I muttered darkly.

Percy held out a bag. "Jelly bean?"

"What's _wrong_ with you?"

"I, young cousin, am amazing, and have an endless supply of blue colored candies that could be yours. But, since you insulted me, I won't give you any." He shrugged and shoved a handful into his already blue mouth.

Then I remembered how hungry I was. "Oh, sorry. Give me some."

He held it up high, out of my reach. "Nope."

"Never mind. I don't want your blue colored candies."

"Guys," said Annabeth. "Try, oh try, to make us all believe you're more mature than you really are, which is basically not at all."

"Yes, let's get on with this." Mr. D flipped his hand around lazily. "Discuss Nolan's prophecy and all sorts of other useless things that he isn't going to pay attention to anyway."

"Well, should we start with the obvious?" started Aven's cabin counselor.

"What's that?" I said intelligently.

"Go ahead, let Abby talk," said Mr. D.

"It's Addy."

"Really?" he said, in a voice that didn't sound like he cared.

Addy (_that's_ her name) shook her head slightly and started to talk again. "Whatever is going to happen, it's going to happen in another country. _The Owl, the Betrayed, and the King of the Ghosts/ shall travel the sea to meet a devilish host."_

"So?"

"Do you plan on swimming across the ocean?" Addy asked simply. "We need a plane."

"No," Percy and I said simultaneously, which happens more often than I would feel comfortable admitting. "No planes," I continued.

"Why not?" asked Clarisse, leaning against the table. "Zeus and Hades have a different relationship than him and Poseidon. You would be fine."

"That doesn't mean they have a _good_ relationship," I insisted. "I'd rater not push it. Let's get a boat."

"That's a stupid idea." Will Solace, Apollo cabin head counselor, put his feet up on the table. "A boat would be ridiculously long. Way longer than a plane. We might not have that time. What if the world ended or something while you were chatting with some fisherman?"

"How would we even get a boat?" asked Amanda Plume, head counselor of cabin 10.

"How are we going to get a plane?" I retorted.

"We'll push that aside for now," said Chiron. "You're allowed to bring along two other campers with you."

"Yeah," I moaned. "I'm not sure I'm even on a friendly basis with two campers."

"Well, you know you need an Athena camper," pointed out Annabeth.

"What?"

"_The Owl, the Betrayed, and the King of the Ghosts,_" she repeated, rolling her eyes. "Really, Nico. People are going to start thinking you're an idiot."

"Well, I'm the King of Ghosts, I think," I started glaring at her. "And finding a camper from cabin 6 shouldn't be too hard. Who the heck is the Betrayed?"

She shrugged. Thanks for the help, o daughter of wisdom.

Chiron put a hand on his shoulder. "These things have a funny way of happening on their own. Pick the person you feel you should have with you, and they will be the person you need."

Helpful Hint #1,452) Always listen to the horse.

So I shoveled the sarcastic (and amazingly witty) comment forming in my mouth back up into my brain for a rainy day and only half listened to the rest of the meeting.

Half an hour later, Aven knocked on the door of the Big House. "Can I play Mario Kart again? I've been challenged to a rematch."

"We were done," I said quickly, standing up and moving away from the table. We had just been talking about ways to get enough money for three tickets to another continent and still have money to live off of afterward, which was hard. Because, for the love of the gods, none of us knew which continent to go to.

"Want to play Mario Kart?"

"That depends," I answered sulkily. "Do you have food?"

"We have one more remote for you." She smiled and went over to sit on the couch. Two kids walked in after her. Neither of them was Glasses Boy. One was fourteen, maybe older, and the other might have been a really short thirteen year old or a really tall eleven year old. I'm going for the latter.

I settled on the couch grudgingly. "Is this what you do at home?" I asked.

"Eat your roll and be quiet. It's _game time_!" Aven threw a roll at my head, followed by a remote that nearly caused my decapitation. Not that she cared

"That almost took out my handsome head."

"You have a hard head," she said absently. "If you didn't, you and Tess would get along a lot better."

I ate my roll moodily and picked a character.

Aven was Koopa Troopa. The older guy was Mario, the younger one was Luigi, and I picked the Yoshi. I felt a little foolish, but it was over pretty quickly. Aven left us all in the dust.

"Is this seriously the only thing you do?" asked the older. "You're a master." The other kid put down his remote and walked out the door angrily.

"It's natural." She grinned. She leaned past him and looked at me. "How was the meeting?"

"Boring. And foodless."

"That's not what I meant." Aven took out two more rolls.

"How big are your pockets?" I asked. See, guy pockets are large because we are amazing. Girl pocket are small and useless.

"I'm wearing guy sweats," she explained. "Only the most comfortable things in the world."

"One for the road?" asked the fourteen/fifteen-year-old guy, getting up from the couch and making for the door. Aven threw him one of the rolls and took a bite the size of Canada out of the other one.

"You're going to get fat."

"Good." She threw the half eaten roll at my head again, and I got butter all over my eyebrow. "So? How did it go? What's going to happen? I don't know how quests work. Are there rules?"

I laughed bitterly. "That's what the prophecy is for."

Aven was quiet. "Maybe you should go to Europe."

"Huh?"

"Oh, I just meant, you know." She scratched her head awkwardly. "It said you would travel overseas or something. And Europe is as good a place as any. I mean, I was born there, so that automatically makes it awesome."

Her joke seemed strange and out of place. "Are you okay?"

"I'm just tired," she said quickly.

"That," I started dryly, "is the third most used lie ever. Right under 'I don't have any gum,' and 'I have read the Terms and Agreements.'"

She puffed out her cheeks like a chipmunk and blew out the air like a balloon. "I just think it would be a good place to start." Aven wrinkled her nose at the television screen. "If one of your best friends betrayed you, what do you think you would do? Would you forgive them? You would, right? I mean, they're your friend after all, even if they did almost get you killed and stuff...And it's not like they don't still love you, they just don't see eye to eye with you on an important thing, and made a bad choice or two and...stuff."

I started to laugh and then almost choked on my roll. "If my best friend betrayed me?"

"Just a little bit." She put her thumb and pointer finger together, almost touching. "An itty bitty bit."

"Think of an appropriate movie to compare it to."

"Um...like Mac from _Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull_. Wait. No, forget that. I wanted to punch him by the end of that movie."

She paused. "Like Ron in the seventh _Harry Potter,_ when he left. Only he never came back, and told Voldemort that they were planning on killing the Horocruxes."

"Why would he do that?"

"Because, um, he thought that a world with wizards on top was a good idea. Of course, Ron is amazing and would never do such a thing. This is all hypothetical."

"Dude," I sat back. "This in an intense situation, even if it _is _hypothetical. I would send the guy to Tartarus and have done with it. Schedule him for an eternity of eating nothing but brussle sprouts or something."

"What if he can't taste PTC?"

"What the heck is that?"

"Oh!" she exclaimed, taking a handful of brussel sprouts from dinner out of her pocket. "It's a bitter tasting...thing...that is in things like broccoli and brussel sprouts that makes it taste bad. Only, some people can't taste it, so they like them more than everyone else. It's all genetic."

I stared at her hand. "Why do you have brussel sprouts in your pocket?"

She looked at me sheepishly. "In case we need them in our hypothetical conversation?"

I snorted.

Aven stuck her tongue out. "I never said I was perfect."

"You've said you were amazing."

"Well, I _am _amazing, so that's okay. Perfect, I am not." "Oh, believe me, I know." I rolled my eyes. "You eat too much. You have trouble staying on both feet. You make too many movie references. You read all the time. You actually _like _pickles—"

"Only the Vlasic ones!" she insisted. "I hate dill pickles. Unless we're talking about the kid from Rugrats."

I rolled my eyes. "Can I continue?"

"Go ahead."

"When you eat, which is all the time, you get it all over your face. You're emotionally scarred."

"Excuse me?" she laughed.

"All demigods are emotionally scarred. It's like, a requirement. To be a demigod, you have to have a terrible experience or two."

"And get attacked by monsters. And put up with finicky gods. And have people trying to kill you. And save the world on your summer vacation."

"What's with you and interrupting me?"

"I think Tess is rubbing off on me."

"I can't handle two of her."

"Fine." Aven rubbed her nose. "Tell me, then. What's your emotional scar?"

"What do you mean?"

"You said every demigod had one. That includes you, last time I checked."

"I am the exception to every rule."

She just raised an eyebrow in an annoying Tess-like manner.

I sighed. "Well...let's see. Where should I start?"

"Oh, I don't know. Just start talking. That's what you usually do."

I would have felt offended if that hadn't been true. And, besides, us devilishly handsome young men can't be angered by the jibes of crazy people like Aven Arnett. It's in the Guidebook for Devilishly Handsome Young Men.

Helpful Hint #5,610) always (ALWAYS) trust the Guidebook.

"Prepare yourself. When girls hear this, I become incredibly appealing."

"Don't worry. I'll keep the current you in mind."

I feel like that might have been inadvertently insulting.

"Well, my mom got blasted by Zeus."

Of course, being the weirdo that she is, Aven didn't feel guilty for bringing up the pain of my life before camp. I was waiting for her to bring out a giant box of popcorn from her man-pants and start eating it. "Um...yeah."

"Go on!" she said, like she was worried I didn't think she was listening. And she was. And also making me increasingly uncomfortable.

"I lived in this magical hotel for...oh...I don't know, seventy years?"

Aven whistled appreciatively. "You old man. Know any dinosaurs?" she grinned.

I ignored her. "Me and my sister left and went to this creepy school run by a monster with two different colored eyes." I paused as Aven mouthed the word "sister," but she didn't ask any questions. "Percy saved us. Bianca, my sister, joined the Hunters of Artemis. They went on a quest and she died."

I'm not sure which one made me more uncomfortable: talking about it again or Aven's weird indifference. Most girls start crying or something. Well, I don't think Tess would either. She'd probably tell me to suck it up or something. Maybe punch me in the stomach for annoying her. But Tess can hardly be classified as a girl anyway.

"I blamed Percy for a while, then I got over it and helped save the world and stuff. And that's my life in one depressing paragraph." Or it would have been if Aven didn't keep interrupting me and/or creeping me out.

She fiddled with her pants. Right when I thought she was about to say something really deep and insightful, she said, "I'm hungry," and brought out a bag of cheese curls.

I stared at her. "What's wrong with you?"

Aven licked the cheese off of her fingers. "Well, if I tried to say something to cheer you up you would just make fun of me, so why bother? And food makes everyone happy. Heck, cheese curls make the world go round."

And to prove it, she threw a handful at me and ran out the door. What commenced after this was an angry game of tag/hide-and-seek while Aven sang Disney songs at the top of her lungs.

"_Who put the glad in gladiator?__  
__Hercules!__  
__Whose daring deeds are great the-a-ter?__  
__Hercules!__  
__Is he bold?__  
__No one braver__  
__Is he sweet?__  
__Our fav'rite flavor__  
__Hercules, Hercules!"_

**Someone told me I needed to make Aven more mature as the story progresses (to which I heartily agree) and this is the closest I could get at the moment. Which is sorta...not at all. :)**

**Eh. It's all good. Aven makes me happy. I don't know if any of you guys read the authors notes anyway, but thanks for reading. And if you were wondering, I got iTunes giftcards for the holidays and decided to make a Disney playlist...**

**Disney makes me happy too.**


	9. How to unSuccessfully Eavesdrop

**Soo...**

**Again, if you were wondering what's up with my random inclusion of songs in this story, it's because I have recently transformed (gracefully, like a butterfly, only different...) into something rather like a music fanatic, and I want to spread my fabulous taste to all of the fabulous people who read my story. ;) **

**Also, yes, I know Aven is Mary Sue-ish. I know, I know. She has a flaw. It is NOT that she is clumsy or ditzy. Don't worry. I don't see how one character ruins another, really. But it's all-good, guys. It's only chapter nine.**

**Be prepared for an onslaught of awesomeness right...**

**...  
Now.**

**

* * *

**

**_How to (un)Successfully Eavesdrop_**

**_

* * *

_**

What do ADHD teenagers do when they're bored?

...

Someone please tell me. I'm running out of ideas.

Do you know how long a guy can play Black Ops before tearing his hair out?

It's a long time.

And yet, if this keeps up, I'm going to be bald in my twenties.

Normally, I would be freaking out about a quest at a time like this. There's nothing time consuming than worrying over things that you can't change! Huzzah. And, in truth, I had a lot I could have worried about if I wanted to. For one, I didn't have a country to travel to, I didn't have quest-mates, and, for the love of the gods, _I didn't have a freakin' plane._

That money is definitely not coming out of my pocket, and it's hard to find three tickets cheap enough for the camp to afford it. And for us to, you know, live afterward. We need living money over there in Mystery Land. Darn you, tickets, for alluding me and forcing me to play Black Ops for three and a half hours.

Two hours ago, I got hungry. So, really, the tickets only forced me to play for an hour and a half. The other two was just me trying to distract myself so I didn't have to get up off of the couch and make myself a sandwich.

Alas, my stomach won.

I groaned and got up off of the couch sluggishly, staggered to the doorway like a drunkard (which can be entertaining in itself) and marched down the steps to the dining pavilion.

I can never get other people to make me sandwiches. Annabeth puts, like, one piece of meat on it. What's up with that? If you aren't putting at least half of the bag of meat on the sandwich, it's not even a sandwich. It's two pieces of bread. And no one ever, _ever_ puts on enough mustard. Such is my curse.

Once my sandwich is in hand and half eaten, I was left to ponder my next course of action. Go back and play more video games, maybe rip out the rest of my hair, or do something else.

Option number two seemed more inviting.

I wandered around the camp because I wasn't creative enough to do anything else.

By the end of my wanderings, I was far away from the Olympian cabins, down the hill towards the Minor cabins. There were hundreds of them these days. Truly.

One was playing some music really loud.

Three guesses who?

And if you use more than one, you're officially an idiot.

It wasn't big, wide and short, like the Poseidon cabin in a way, but it looked like a million kindergartners had attacked it with a package of Crayola. It was painted blue like the sky, but someone had gone and drawn pictures on it like the cabin was one big mural. There was a smiling yellow sun with sunglasses and a glass of lemonade surrounded by clouds that looked like bleached cotton candy. Beneath him was a knight in shining armor and a girl with long blonde hair and hearts for eyes swooning in front of him as he struck an impressive pose.

Out of curiosity, I looked at the other side.

The sun was laughing now, pointing at the guy, who was now standing in his boxers, which were covered in smiley faces and standing there like he didn't know what to do. The girl had stolen his clothes and his horse and was running off into the sunset, a little speech bubble written above her golden head. "See you later, sucker!"

Those Cybele kids have dark minds.

I peeked in the window. I was expecting some kind of bizarre pillow fight, from the noise in there. I was wrong.

Aven was standing in the middle of the cabin. She was wearing purple shudder shades I didn't know she owned and her hair was teased into a ridiculous afro, a thing of deodorant (awkward) held to her lips. Obviously hairbrushes just didn't cut it these days. Her and her sisters were all jumping around, dancing to the music blasting with the force of a stick of dynamite out of someone's speakers as the guys all sat on the beds, clapping in time and smiling as they all made full of themselves, singing harmony and laughing as the girls forgot the words.

_I'm thinking, baby, you and I are undeniable__  
__But I'm finding out loves unreliable__  
__I'm giving all I got just to make you stay__  
__Or am I just a roadblock in your way?_

_Cause you're a pretty little windstorm out on the boulevard__  
__Something like a sunset, oh you're a shooting star.__  
__And I might drive myself insane__  
__If those lips aren't speakin' my name!_

_Cause I got some intuition,__  
__or maybe I'm superstitious.__  
__But I think you're a pretty sweet pill__  
__that I'm swallowing down__  
__To counter this addiction.__  
__You've got me on a mission.__  
__Tell me darling, can I get a break somehow?__  
__Could I say no?_

_She's got a love like woe!_

A girl named Amelia started doing the running man as her sisters broke off into the chorus, raising a cheer from the rest of her siblings. I saw the flash of a camera. Some guy realizing what kind of marvelous blackmailing material this would be, I'm guessing.

So, this is what ADHD teenagers do when they're bored...

Interesting.

I tapped the face of the half-naked knight absently and walked back toward the other cabins.

I only made it halfway up the hill before I was accosted by an over zealous camper. "Nico?" I looked at her. It was one of the Aphrodite girls, beautiful in the kind of way that made everyone else look ugly. I was worried by the way she said my name, like I was just the person she had been hoping to see.

Helpful Hint #2) When an Aphrodite girl looks at you like you're just the person she was hoping to see, run in the other direction.

Normally, Aphrodite girls are awesome. I mean, let's face it. They aren't exactly unattractive, right? And, since I'm so irresistible, I've had my fair share of admirers from cabin 10.

Until last year, when one got a tiny bit...obsessive. Now, all Aphrodite girls are kind of scary.

She ran down to me, hair flying, and hooked her arm through mine. "You were just the person I had been hoping to see."

...

I knew it.

She giggled at whatever face I was making. "Oh, don't worry, silly. I just wanted to have a nice friendly chat. We haven't had one in for_ever._" She smiled at me.

_That might be,_ I thought dryly, _because I have no idea who you are._

I racked my brain. Her last name was Miller, I thought. And her name started with a J.

"Jackie?"

She brushed it off. "Candice, actually."

Ouch.

Candice was just as enthusiastic, however. "Have you decided who to invite on your adventure?"

"Not yet," I admitted uncomfortably, walking up toward my cabin hoping for so escape. But she clamped her hands on her arm. "Haven't found anyone who fits the requirements, you know?"

She sighed heavily. "Oh, I know." She glanced at me, up through her eyelashes, since she was at least a foot shorter than I was. "My boyfriend just broke up with me."

"Oh..." I thought this was a really random subject change, like someone had hijacked our conversation and made it take a hard turn left. "He's an idiot, I guess."

Candice sighed in agreement, but she seemed happier. "He left me for another girl, one of my sisters. Can you believe he betrayed me like that?"

_Yes._ "No way." I tried to sound appalled.

"Yeah, I was totally _betrayed,_" she sighed again.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh.

I knew she wanted something.

"Um..."

"Nico?"

I turned around, hoping to see my savior. I saw Tess instead. Well, poop. Maybe she could save me anyway. "Hi, Tess!" I said, sounding around twice as happy to see her as I really was.

Bless those daughters of Athena. She saw my problem quickly. "Don't 'hi, Tess,' me," she snapped, hands on hips. "You're an idiot, you know that?"

..."Yes?"

"You totally forgot." She threw her hands in the air and grabbed my free arm. "Excuse me," she said sweetly to Candice. "Mr. di Angelo has to come and fix the mess he made." Tess tore me from her grip and marched me down to cabin 6.

I collapsed onto the bed once the door closed. "Thanks."

"You absolutely owe me ten bucks," she informed me inattentively, picking up the book she had discarded the last time she left. "You aren't supposed to be in this cabin right now, but you can just stay for a minute or two and head on your merry way."

Gods, I wished it was that easy.

Someone knocked on the door. "Tess?"

"Coming!" She cursed under her breath. "Under the bed," she whispered.

"_What?"_

"Gods, Nico. Get under the bed!" Tess insisted, kicking me in the butt and forcing me beneath the bed I had been sitting on. Then she opened the door.

It was Aven, her teased hair in a pony-tail and her glasses resting on top of her head. I sighed with relief and was about to work my way out from my hiding place when she let out a small squeak and pushed Tess down onto her bed. "I need to talk to you."

No way was I missing this opportunity.

Tess looked at where I was like she knew what I was thinking, and I thought she was going to advise they move to another location, but she just sighed and said, "Sure," as she put her book back down where she had picked it up.

"Are you going with Nico on the quest?"

I nearly choked on dust.

Tess looked at Aven dryly. "Probably," she said. I frowned. Oh great. "Whether the idiot had realized it yet or not."

I took offense to that.

"Will you be...you know, careful?"

"Aren't I always?"

"Well..._you_ are. Nico..." She gestured with her hand, like she was saying, "not so much."

I took offense to that, too.

"You thirsty?" asked Tess abruptly.

Aven blinked at her, caught off guard and confused by the random change of subject. "Do you have tea?"

Tess looked at her for a minute. "I forgot you were British." She shook her head. "I've got some illegal Coke products and a few Snapple's."

"Coke is fine."

Tess handed it to her, and Aven fiddled with the tab before breaking it off and taking a long sip. Tess settled down with one of her own. "Why should Nico be careful?" she continued.

"Not just Nico," Aven insisted, puffing out her cheeks indignantly. "I just think you should be extra careful this time."

"Why?"

"Well," she said, dipping her finger in her soda and drawing pictures on her arm with it. She had a silver Sharpie picture of a beach drawn on her hand. "I don't really know. I maybe, kind of, you know, didn't tell you guys _everything_ about...stuff and...stuff..." Her voice faded. "Just stuffy stuff, you know."

"Big surprise," Tess replied sardonically.

"And, normally, that'd be okay, because it doesn't matter to the two of you anyway," she said.

"You don't know that. What if you were in huge trouble and the only way to save you was to do some sort of quiz on your past life?"

"Could that really even happen?"

"I have no idea," Tess finished, nodding.

Aven grinned at her. "Yeah, just in case." She swallowed another gulp of Coke and stuck her tongue out at herself. "Do you think I'm perfect?"

"No body is perfect," scoffed Tess. "Even though you do have the metabolism of a little Asian kid."

Aven laughed. "Are you perfect?"

"I'm about as close as it gets." She sniffed.

The smaller girl looked down at her Coke. Her face turned green, and she placed the can down next to her on the floor like she couldn't look at it anymore. "Maybe I should wait. Yeah." She got up. "I think I'll wait."

"Wait for what?"

And then, quite suddenly, Aven started wailing.

I'm glad she was so loud. It hid the sound of my head hitting the bottom of the bed as I jumped.

Tess looked at Aven like she was a wounded animal she wasn't sure how to deal with.

Aven took a deep breath, then another, then a few more in quick succession, so she sounded like a dog panting. "I need to go." She turned and walked out of the door.

Tess screamed, and this time I almost gave myself a concussion. "Of all the flighty, ridiculous, insensible, terrible, _fickle_ people in the entire world, we got saddled with _her!"_ Tess kicked the post of the bed and fell back onto her mattress with a groan as the door closed, which Aven must have heard and I don't think improved her mood. "And here I was think I was going to get some solid information," she muttered darkly.

I climbed out from underneath the bed. "Yeah, me too."

She just raised an eyebrow and looked at Aven's nearly full soda can. "Maybe caffeine isn't a good thing for an emotional ADHD demigod."

I just shrugged and picked it up. "I'm not emotional," I pointed out as I took a gulp.

"What do you think she was going to tell us?"

"I have an impressive conspiracy theory ready involving a giant octopus and millionaire with a toupee," I offered. It was not appreciated.

Tess looked stoic. "Have you asked her to come on the quest, or not?"

"Well, apparently I already asked you, and I don't really remember that. So I could have and just forgot." I shrugged. She glared at me. I shrugged again.

"I do have a solution to one problem, at least." Tess smiled creepily. "Like how to get a plane ride to Europe."

"Oh? I decided we were going to Europe, too? I really wish I could remember this conversation, I must have been fantastic." But my curiosity won out in the end. "Well, go on, then. Shoot."

"You know that gay kid Aven hangs out with all the time?"

I blinked. "Yesssssss?"

"Aven brought him to our room a few times to work on homework and stuff," she said dismissively. "Anyway, his full name is Kashton Arthur Willingham."

"And this has any sort of meaning to me because..."

"Arthur Willingham?" Tess pressed. "The super rich guy?"

I just shrugged.

She just rolled her eyes, muttering dark thing under her breath that I couldn't quite catch. Then she rolled her eyes and continued. "Dude, the guy is a handsome version of Bill Gates."

"And his name is Arthur Willingham? It's a miracle!"

"Nico."

"Fine! I'll bite. What kind of point does this conversation have? 'Cause it's lost on me."

"Don't you think being friends with the son of the spectacularly wealthy Arthur Willingham might, just _might_, be able to get us a plane?" She sat back, arms crossed, looking incredibly please with herself.

"One thing." I held up a finger. Well, I hate to put a rain on her parade...no, wait. I'm happy to. "We aren't _friends_ with the son of the spectacularly wealthy Arthur Willingham."

"_You_ aren't," Tess said smugly.

"Alright," I said, holding up my hands. "Then I'll just move on to the second thing."

She raised one blonde eyebrow, like she was trying to see if I could think of anything she hadn't. It was a challenge.

Or she was just surprised I had the brain capacity to think of two points.

"Kashton Willingham is, most definitely, a mortal," I pointed out. "He doesn't know anything about us. We can't be all like, 'Hey, dude! We're going on a quest to another continent to save the world after we bombed the school and get into all sorts of other interesting shenanigans! Can we borrow a plane?'"

The other eyebrow went up. "Oh?"

I didn't like her tone. Obviously, this girl knew something else that I didn't.

"Kashton doesn't know all about us, but he knows enough. He came in after that fight in our dorm room and wasn't surprised in the least."

"But he's mortal?"

Tess nodded.

"You think Aven told him?"

"Nah," she said, rolling her eyes. "She wouldn't. He figured it out. But sure as Hades he knows. I'm thinking he's immune to the Mist, but I could be wrong."

"So you want us to ask our sorta kinda friend, who sorta kinda knows things, if we can borrow his plane." My handsome head was spinning.

"You're paraphrasing, but yes."

"Obviously, we're screwed over anyway. Let's go for it."

Hah! I thought we were screwed over _then_.

Oh, Nico, handsome Nico, if only you knew just how screwed over you were going to be.

"Hello again," I said cheerfully.

Bo glanced at me. She seemed more...there. Don't get me wrong, she was still dead, but she was so see-through, so...not there.

That's me. The poet. Blessing the ladies with one haiku at a time. "So, what do you want to warn me about this time? 2012? That seems suitably ominous and depressing."

She scoffed. "Stupid mortals. Even going so far as to create a movie about it, and a bad one at that. They were all worried about the year 2000 and we survived that. They have absolutely no sense of perspective." Her white dress fluttered around her.

"Well?"

"What?"

"What am I here for?"

Bo blinked. "I'm not sure. Uncertain, indeterminate."

I scowled. "Lady, I'm in a bad mood. I don't need you to recite a thesaurus to me. What do you mean, you don't know?"

She blinked again. "I'm unsure."

"I caught that."

"Unsure, meaning-not fixed or certain."

I frowned. "I don't need the dictionary either."

She looked at me with dark eyes. "You have many questions. Your subconscious knows that I have the answers. You've brought yourself here, son of Hades."

I tapped my foot impatiently on the smoky floor, puffs of shadow billowing up around my feet. Totally ruined my sneakers. I looked at her, waiting for her to continue.

"You leave for your quest soon. You don't know what you're doing, yet."

She said it vaguely, airily, like it didn't matter. Nothing mattered to her, after all. She was dead. And obviously, she knew a lot more than I did. Why does this always happen? Stupid smart people. Always getting on my nerves.

"Will you ask Aven to come with you?"

It was my turn to blink at her. "Do you think she wants to come?"

Bo frowned slightly. "No, I can practically guarantee she does not. Whether she needs to or not is another matter. You need her."

I scowled. "I don't need an unwilling demigod on a quest. They make nuisances of themselves. If she doesn't want to come, I won't bother asking. I'll ask Percy."

"That's a mistake."

"It's not like I haven't made them before. I like to be consistent."

She squinted at me, eyebrows upturned. "You have a long road ahead of you. Try not to screw is up, okay?"

**Book still hasn't arrived. Pining is a full-time occupation, requiring much energy and multiple episodes of NCIS. Sorry it took so long to update. ;)**


	10. How to Destroy Taco Bell

**So, basically, I feel like poop. I've been sick since Tuesday, but that's okay. Because it's snowing! Yay!**

**Sorry I haven't updated lately. But when you feel like poop, you try not to write. The good guys die and the bad guys win because you have too much snot up your nose.**

**Btw, the chapter before the chapter before this one, I got SEVENTEEN reviews!**

**Dudes. That is like, way beyond awesome. :)**

**You know what? I think this story needs a theme song...**

**I also have the urge to write a Harry Potter fanfic (thanks, Anna). What do you think?**

**PS. Steelers.**

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**How to Demolish Taco Bell**

* * *

Two days later, Percy was officially on board, Tess was trying to figure out the best way to ask Kashton for some plane tickets to Europe, and I was bored out of my mind.

It's always super boring right before you do anything super cool. It's, like, some sort of the law. The Super Boring Law of the Universe.

Now, last chapter, I found out that bored ADHD demigods jump around their cabins with Afros and fake microphones. For some reason, this did not seem like a good thing to do. So, instead of making an idiot out of myself, I went to the Hall of Manliness.

What is this place, you ask? It is one of the only places where a man can skewer a dummy in armor with a sword and not be considered mentally deranged. Oh yes, my dear arena. All it was missing was a wide screen television for football and a mini-fridge.

Percy was there.

"Yo!" he said, waving his sword at me in a gesture that would have potentially cut off his head if he weren't, you know, invincible and stuff.

"Don't say 'yo,'" I warned. "You're white, and you can't pull it off."

"Excuse me, Mister High School Student?" he started, walking over to me. "I'm a big bad college kid now! I can spend every night partying if I wanted to."

"If you got drunk, a monster would probably come and eat you."

He shrugged. "You win some, you lose some." Percy shivered, running a hand through his dark hair.

"What's the matter?" I asked, not really caring. I just asked because if I didn't he would keep sighing dramatically until I did so. This is better for all of us.

"I have a bad feeling," he said.

"About the quest?"

"About everything."

"Dude, I never took you for a pessimist. That's usually my job. You're supposed to throw jellybeans at my handsome face."

Percy patted his pocket. "I ran out yesterday. This is a bad sign, man. Bad sign." He made a kabob with a Greek dummy and slid him off of his sword quickly, throwing him to one side and preparing to maul the dummy's friend into submission.

"I'll leave you to mourn for your...delicious blue candies in peace." I put my cousins insanity aside and left. He's a drama queen, and if I had stayed there, I would hear nothing except for him complaining. Annabeth wasn't even there to tell him to suck it up.

I decided another sandwich was in order.

"Hey, Nico!" called Tess, running over.

I hung my head and waited to be verbally abused.

She didn't do that. She just sniffed at me disapprovingly and asked, "Have you seen Aven?"

"No," I said. "I don't think I've seen her since she ran out of your cabin wailing, actually. I think she's avoiding us."

Tess put her hands on her hips. "She wasn't at lunch yesterday either. Or dinner."

"Well, it's only a matter of time before she breaks, then," I observed. "Aven Arnett can't handle skipping meals. It's like, her version of Hell."

She pursed her lips. "You can say that, but she has at least a weeks supply in her pockets, and those Cybele kids weren't that fat when they came into the room. Roger dropped a roll out of his shirt when he left."

"Is that why he looked pregnant? Because I was running that through my head trying to figure out how that was possible and I got nothing."

She gave me her normal Tess-scowl, and I gave her my normal Nico (awesome)-shrug and left her to mumble under her breath about how insensitive I was, which is rich coming from her. Patricia Stevens was crying because her boyfriend broke up with her and Tess told her to kick his sad behind and get over it or fall out of a tree.

Tess is all kinds of harsh.

She stopped me before I was out of earshot. "Chiron told me to tell you to pack ASAP."

"Why? We don't have a way out of the country."

She shrugged. "We do, I just haven't asked yet."

"In this instance, there isn't really a difference.

Tess sighed. "Rachel's getting restless, some sort of spiritual mumbo-jumbo is making her antsy. Says we need to leave by tonight or she's going to throw a lamp."

"Noted."

I went off to pack my meager supply of personal belongings.

Later, as I huffed my way up the hill towards the big tree that used to be a friend of mine, I was greeted by an unappreciative, "You're the leader of the quest. You aren't allowed to be late."

Tess tapped her foot irritably, hands on hips, while Percy stood up from petting the dragon. He wiped dragon drool off of his hand and waved.

I hefted my small backpack up higher on my shoulders sulkily and walked ahead of them. "Argus is waiting for us."

"Someone is grumpy," Percy observed. I saw he had broken out his emergency supply of blue candy, a little tip of a plastic bag drooping slightly out of his pocket.

"I had to chase a bunch of Aphrodite girls for an hour before I could convince them to give my stuff back to me without putting some embarrassing curse on it that made my clothes all too tight." I wiped at a lipstick mark on my cheek and opened the door of the white van. "Hello, old friend." I jumped in (and I did _not_ hit my head this time).

Argus grinned as much as he could without opening his mouth from the drivers seat, waited for the others to hop in, and drove off towards town.

* * *

"I'm hungry."

"Aren't all girls on an eternal diet, or something?" I snapped. "Go eat a cabbage."

Day 2 in New York. The Big Apple. The Center of the Universe. The City that Never Sleeps.

That last one is actually kind of ironic, considering that three years ago, the entire population decided to lie down for a nap while titans tried to take over the world. Monsters rampaging. Statues coming to life. Demigods blowing stuff up. The Stoll brothers stealing from candy shops. They missed out.

"Don't be snippy, Nico," Tess sniffed. "You're just angry because—"

"Because we're stuck in America when we should be in some other country doing cool stuff? Yes, yes I am."

"You know what?" Percy intervened. It was a little weird, leading a quest when there's a college kid, a legendary college kid, coming with you, but Percy was too busy keeping Tess and I from killing each other to feel awkward. "I feel like we could all use some cheering up. Taco Bell, here we come."

"Why Taco Bell?"

"It's happiness in taco form, dear cousin." He grabbed his hotel key and shoved it in his back pocket, checked to make sure Riptide was where it was supposed to be, and opened the door for us. "Come on. There's one just up the street."

I shrugged and walked out after him. I paused in the doorway to make sure Tess was behind us.

She hesitated, looking at the backpack she'd brought along. It was surprisingly light, considering I always thought of Tess as someone who would bring her entire wardrobe with her everywhere she went, whether she was running for her life or not. She paused for another moment before picking it up and hefting it onto her shoulders.

She walked past me, muttering darkly. "Something bad is about to happen." She sniffed haughtily and pushed past me into the hallway.

I stood there for a second, looking at my own bag. I shrugged again and put it on. "Gods save me from paranoid women." But, hey. Better safe than sorry, right? Even if I looked like a teenage hiker.

"Hurry up, Nico!"

"Oh, shut up, Percy. I'm coming." I grabbed my hotel card, shoved it into my pocket, and shut the door behind me.

* * *

Now, before you ask, I'll just answer a few questions.

When I walked into that Taco Bell, that amazing fast food place, did I know I would end up in jail? Did I realize that I was about to be mythically mugged? No. No, I did not.

So, I ordered my multiple Mexican rip-off items like that happy little child that I was. My favorite was the Chalupa. Mostly because it was fun to say. I didn't even know what it was when I ordered it, but saying Chalupa more than once is extremely exciting.

Chalupachalupacalupachalupa—

"Nico!"

"Huh?"

Tess kicked my shin.

"Why do you always resort to violence?" I rubbed my leg forlornly.

"It's the only thing that gets through your thick head," she said icily. "Percy went to the bathroom."

"A brutal attack to my shin was necessary to relay that information?" I demanded. "Because I really don't think it was."

She scowled and jerked her pointer finger at my drink. "Can I have a sip?"

"I don't want your cooties."

Tess grabbed my Coke anyway, wiping the spittle off the straw before taking what could only be described as a long gulp. Sip? Really?

"Nico!" Percy shouted from the doorway of the bathroom. Tess spat out the soda, spraying the table (and my precious Chalupa) like rain.

Some people screamed. The smarter ones ran for the door. One idiot ran into the bathroom, like if he managed to pee soon, there wouldn't be a scary monster jumping out from behind the counter.

It didn't work.

Workers screamed shrilly. Tess cursed angrily in Ancient Greek. "You know, I'm starting to think you're just unlucky to be around," she told me.

"Maybe it's you," I replied, quite reasonably I think.

She looked at me blankly. "No. It's definitely you." She unzipped her backpack and took out whip, the kind with a bunch of tail-thingies (they're called thongs, but that's embarrassing for me to day outside of parenthesis), dotted with barbed bits of metal that hooked into your skin. It wasn't good at killing people quickly, but I figured it was like Tess herself. She just makes you wish you were dead.

I pulled out my own sword, and there was a sudden flash of glowing bronze by the boys' restroom that I'm pretty sure meant Percy had as well. Of course, with the guys' room, you never really know.

The thing roared. It was some kind of drakon (which are different from dragons, subtly).

"Python," Tess whispered.

"I don't really think it matters what its name is!"

"Shut _up_, Nico!"

"I wasn't talking!"

"Incoming!" Percy yelled from across the room. A large black Converse went flying, barely hitting Mr. Python at all. My dear cousin is a failure with projectiles. But it definitely got the things attention. "Oh, crap." He backed up against the wall by the bathroom.

Tess' whip went flashing by, snaking past my face and hitting the thing on the shoulder. The whip seemed to elongate, impossibly covering the distance between the two of them swiftly. The barbs hooked into his (or her...its?) skin, drawing blood, and she pulled back savagely, ripping off scaly flesh.

I looked at her. "Ew."

"Don't be a baby." She swung it again.

"Excuse me?"

"Nico!" Percy yelled again.

I ducked. Our table was sliced in two by drakon claws, and my Chaulpa (chalupachalupachalupachalupa) went flying, meat and cheese going in at least three different directions. "Not cool!" I picked myself up off of the floor, not bothering the dust off my butt or check to see in that stain was meat or not. I thrust my sword in it's (definitely an it) general direction. Blood, an icky, acidic green, bubbled and ran down the blade sluggishly.

"Ew," I repeated. Why does being a demigod have to be so gross?

Glass shattered. Someone jumped up from the behind the counter. I heard something splatter. Python howled. Grease dripped off of it like sweat as it convulsed. Aven (hello!) stood behind it, holding one of the baskets they fried the fries in daintily by one hand. It was blistering and red, like not all of the grease had made it too the monster. "Ouch," she whimpered, flinging down the basket like it burned (which it did) and picking up her bow from the floor. She loaded an arrow and shot. Her fingers weren't working like they were supposed to, the grease moving its way down her hand. Python got an arrow in the behind.

She'd forgotten the tail. As it flailed, the drakon swept Aven off of her feet, literally, and she tumbled to the ground with a heavy thump.

Percy brought his sword down in a vicious overhead cut, and Python stared at the stump on his rump for a moment before roaring again. Tess' whip raked it across the face, and I did my best to keep the thing away from her when it came marching over.

Tess ran over to Aven, picked up the bow, got an arrow from her quiver, and loaded, taking careful aim. She shot.

The arrow sank into the drakons eyeball.

"_Ew._"

One more slash from Riptide, and we could all see what it was thinking. We weren't worth it. With one more deafening screech, it crawled over the counter one more time and stuffed itself out of the drive thru window.

We reveled in our momentary victory. Percy bent down to look at Aven's hand, but she snatched it from him, holding it close to her chest so he couldn't see. "Go back."

"Excuse me?"

"Camp. Go back to camp."

Percy straightened, noting that her eyes and nose were red, her eyes unusually bright. He patted his back pocket, making sure his hotel key was still there, grabbed his burrito from the ruins that had once been our table, and walked out of the demolished Taco Bell.

"We should leave," said Tess, heaving her backpack up from the wreckage. "Before the police come."

"But it wasn't our fault," said Aven still clutching her ruin hand.

I was about to tell her that the police really wouldn't care. Then the sirens started ringing, red and blue flashing outside the windows, and a guy with a megaphone shouted at us to put our hands up. Tess wrapped her whip around her waist like a belt, Aven's bow disappeared, and I put my sword away. A bunch of men came in carefully through the door, pointing guns at our face.

I looked sourly at Tess. "Stupid muggles."

**I END WITH A HARRY POTTER REFERENCE! YAY!**

**And I realize that Taco Bell has no French fries...but they should.**


	11. How to Break out of Jail

**So...I'm grounded.**

**From the computer.**

**"How are you updating?" you ask.**

**That, my dear readers, is because of the bottomless guilt that's been sweeping over me for the last...Well, since I updated last time. Which was a while ago.**

**So, basically, I'm violating the terms of my ground...a...tion...**

**Yeah.  
**

* * *

_How to Break out of Jail_

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_

"So..." I tugged my wrists apart, testing the handcuffs.

Aven fidgeted, squirming further and further down into the cracked leather of the seats of the police car, her seatbelt slipping up just under her nose. Her hair stuck up against the back of the chair from where she had slid down it. She put her feet up on the ceiling. All in all, Aven looked like a little, uncomfortable, fidgeting human-pretzel.

Tess glared at her, shooting her a look that made the policeman in the front seat cringe. "Stop that."

Aven dropped her feet back to the floor with a heavy thump and pushed herself upright, sitting even straighter than she had before, like this would make her forgiven. She forgot about her hair, which now stood up comically high on her head.

"What did you kids think you were doing?" asked the policeman. "Blowing up a building? Did you think you would get away with it?"

"See, sir," started Aven, with what I'm pretty sure was an uncontrollable squeak in her voice. "We weren't really—"

"Be quiet, girl," he said more softly. "It was obvious to all of us you were simply a victim."

Blinking, she looked down at her tattered hand. She wasn't able to feel it yet, pumped up with adrenaline, but her skin was looking increasingly pale, falling from tan to snow white. Tess and I had an ongoing bet as to when she would start to cry. Call us cruel. We probably are.

"Actually, sir," she started again. "I was just—"

"We just need to keep you in custody to make sure you weren't more heavily involved," he interrupted again.

Aven blinked again. "Right..." she said uncertainly.

He looked at me sharply. "What do you think you're doing, putting nice girls in harms way?"

Thinking of Tess, I snorted before I could stop myself. I pulled it off as a cough as well as I could, and she patted my back helpfully, though much harder than necessary. She'd probably worked out why I'd snorted in the first place.

Smart girls will be the death of me.

He pointed a finger at me. "I have a daughter not much younger than that little one," he told me harshly, pointing at Aven, and I wondered how old he thought she was, since she was actually a few months older than me. "I don't like it when your kind mess with them."

Aven opened her mouth, as if to tell that she had helped me out of her own free will, but Tess successfully told her to plug it with another well place glare and a kick to the shin.

"I didn't draw anyone into anything!" I insisted. "Do I look like I could destroy a Taco Bell?"

He raised an eyebrow. The answer was clear. _Yes, yes you do._

Tess snorted this time.

"We saw her on the ground after it happened and were going to help her when you lot came in," I told him, sufficiently angry. "You missed the idiot that did it! It's not like he stuck around."

Before he could answer (Aven had slumped in her seat again, hiding her hand in her jacket as best she could) someone garbled something into the walkie talkie connected with his, and some old mans' voice echoed. He talked into it, got a response, and got out of the car. We had just been sitting in front of the police station while he waited for his partner, but something changed this plan. "Stay," he warned, like I was a misbehaving dog. He locked the doors and hurried into the building.

I sat there, slightly stunned, sulking in a police car for the first (and probably not the last) time in my life.

I was hot. I was sweaty. I was _bleeding._ Blood was drying on my forehead, most likely my own, making my hair crunchy and disgusting. Not that I, Nico di Angelo, am ever disgusting.

Tess' sleeve was practically torn off, and there was a reddish tinge to the dark brown on the cloth. Three guesses what that was.

I thought longingly of my Chalupa, lying scattered, it's guts spilling out in the wreckage of what had once been a delightful Taco Bell. Sure, it could have been my guts. I could be dead, lying in a pool of my own blood. But I didn't care. My Chalupa was gone. I was in mourning.

The only thing that brought me out of my depression was noise outside my window. I looked at the offender.

It was a girl. She was short, 5'1, maybe, and a total ginger. Her skin was pale, like she had died three days ago, and her nose, which was small enough to barely be considered a nose at all, was sprinkled with little brown freckles. Her hair was dark red and long and thick, past her shoulder blades, and she had bangs that swept across her entire forehead. Her green eyes were naturally large, now unnaturally wide as she stared at me through the glass. She held a little guitar, a ukulele, in her small hands, strumming some song and singing about Hawaiian punch.

She grinned at me lopsidedly and mouthed "Nico."

I said a very dirty word.

She took out a pair of keys from her back pocket and opened the passengers' side door, tucking her ukulele under her arm. "Nico?" she said, her mouth twisted in mirth. She looked like she had been drinking the Bohemian juice, wearing on of those billowing shirts that slid off of one shoulder and a chunky necklace. Of course, she always looked like she'd been drinking Bohemian juice, so nothing had change since I last saw her.

"Catherine."

Aven sat up straight about, brow furrowed in confusion. "Catherine?" she asked me, like it was some sort of foreign word she'd never heard before.

Catherine just nodded and smiled. "Kostopoulos. Catherine Kostopoulos. Fourteen-year-old resident of New York. This car is my dads', presumably the officer whom arrested you." She raised a red eyebrow at me, eying the handcuffs. "What kind of shenanigans have you been getting into?"

Tess snapped. "None of your business!" she said with a huff.

I ignored her. "Blew up a Taco Bell."

Catherine blinked at Tess, like she hadn't expected to get a negative reaction to her somewhat (alright, completely) random appearance. But she recovered quickly. "And you brought girls along for the ride!" she squealed. She bit her tongue as she smiled. "Rosie will just be _so_ angry!"

I could feel my face darken. "No."

"Who is Rosie?" asked Tess, distracted from her anger in the face of an opportunity to make me miserable.

"A positively demonic ex-girlfriend." Catherine smiled.

I cursed under my breath.

"And I would know," Catherine continued, blowing a piece of red hair out of her face. "I had to put up with her for_ever_. The little devil was terrible for my chi."

"And who exactly are _you_?" Tess asked.

Aven grinned. "A former flame?" she giggled.

We both looked at them flatly. "No," I said. Catherine looked like someone had shoved a dead animal in her face. But she recovered quickly again, giving a slow, lopsided grin.

"We traveled together," she said simply. "Multiple times."

She didn't mention that we had gone on quests together. That her, Rosie, and I had trotted across America for something some god lost and was too lazy to get back. She also, hallelujah, did not mention that fact that she was the awkward third wheel for two weeks, before I realized that Rosie was crazy, and she did not mention that she had told me so.

At least, not at that moment. When it happened, it was the only thing that ever left her mouth.

"So, Catherine," I said, trying to change the subject. "Can you do me a favor?"

"I've done plenty for you in the past. Your favor-tab is incredibly high."

"I've done favors for you, too!" I insisted.

"Like what?" she challenged easily.

"I saved you from that hole."

"I saved you from being run over by a truck."

"I gave you ten bucks to buy that first aid kit."

"I gave you twenty to buy that video game."

"I pretended to be your brother to get you out of that school."

"I pretended to be your girlfriend to save you from that creepy girl. That _at least _counts as two favors."

"What?" I demanded. "Why?"

"She tried to beat me up."

"But she didn't."

"I had to get stitches."

"And she got a broken nose. All is well that ends well!"

"Oh, _shut up!_" Tess screeched. "Why don't you just charm her into giving you the key, or something?" she offered sardonically.

"I've tried before," I explained. "Catherine 'doesn't tolerate it.'" I even added finger quotes (gods, I hate those). "She's got the heart of a nun."

Catherine smiled genuinely, like there had never been anything said that was so true, twirling the keys around her finger. The wind ruffled her shirt. "I might be," she started, eying me wickedly. "But I'm a nun with a key."

Aven pushed Tess' face away, trying to get a clear view of the fourteen-year-old with our fate in her devious little hands. "We need to get to the airport," she said after a moment."

Catherine crossed her arms. "Why would you need to do that?"

"We're on a quest," I explained.

She looked at me, then Tess and Aven, and rolled her eyes. "Why didn't you say so?" she said breezily, tossing us the keys. She got out, shut the door, and marched over to the driver's side as I undid the cuffs. She had already slid into the drivers seat and gotten her seatbelt on by the time Aven offered them back to her. She shoved the keys into the ignition and hit the gas.

"Um," Aven started. "Cate?"

"Catherine," she said plainly.

"Right. What are you doing?"

I saw her reflection smile in the rearview mirror. "What's it look like I'm doing?"

"Driving," said Tess shortly. "Illegally."

"Why don't you let one of us drive?" I offered. "We look closer to the driving age than you."

"And that would be a good idea, if it weren't for the fact that this is a police car. Chillax." Her fingers tapped the wheel to the beat of a song that didn't exist anywhere but in her own head. Her ukulele lay forgotten on the chair beside her. "I borrow dad's car all the time. The officers won't think twice about it."

Aven looked at her. "But it's illegal."

"Officers are nefarious for bending the rules," Catherine said smoothly, smiling again, her fingers still beating the leather cover on the wheel. "I'd be different if I were a terrible driver, or if I was hurting someone. But I'm not. So we're good. Grab me my boots from under the seat, will you?"

I jumped, realizing she was talking to me. I tossed a pair of worn combat at her as she took a pair of tie-dyed sunglasses from on top of the dash. Once we'd reached a long line of traffic, she ripped off her shoes and replaced them with the boots in record time, quickly letting her feet back to their regular place on the pedals. She took of her chunky necklace too, making little changes as she talked, slowly transforming from a hippie to a demigod. "Why the airport?"

"We're going to Europe."

"Oh! Nico goes international!" She grinned again, tucking her red hair behind her ear. "Why bother with a plane though? It's dangerous for Poseidon's kids, especially, but it can't be all peachy for Hades' children either. Why not just shadow travel?"

"I've never taken three people across the Atlantic before," I explained. "I'd hate to be halfway there before I realized I couldn't make it."

Catherine nodded, drawing up her hair and tying it back with an elastic, keeping one hand on the wheel as she lurched forward. "The Atlantic is infamous for it's lack of landing spots."

"Have you talked to Kashton yet?" I asked Tess. She drew a breath, like she was about to say something, but she let it all out at once and looked sulky. "You haven't? What are we supposed to do once we get to the airport?"

"I talked to him a few days ago, when I found out you all were heading to New York, don't worry." Aven put a hand on Tess' shoulder. "He flew up to meet us. He'll be here soon."

Tess glared at Aven's hand. Aven didn't get the message. The daughter of Athena just resorted to shrugging it off and, in desperation to change the subject, asked Catherine, "So, you play the ukulele?"

Catherine grinned at her in the rearview mirror. "And the melodica."

"What's a melodica?"

"It's like a harmonica with keys," I explained in a monotone.

"I can play that, too," continued Catherine. "The harmonica. And I'm in the process of learning the banjo. It's not as easy as it looks either." Her fingers started tapping on the wheel more quickly, like she was playing some frantic jingle in a commercial.

Thinking back on it, I don't remember if it was Aven or Tess who said, "Um...what's you're story?" This was a standard demigod-to-demigod question.

Catherine didn't react at first, just kept navigating the roads of New York like she had been. "It's a bad one," she said after a minute.

"How bad?" asked Aven quickly. She, at least, could empathize.

"Pretty bad," Catherine admitted, making a right. "I was on Kronos' side during the war."

Tess stiffened and glared at me. You didn't have to be psychic to pick up what she was thinking. _Why have you put our fates in her hands? _

Catherine glanced at her in the mirror. "I was eleven," she explained further, like this made it okay, even though she already knew that it didn't. "Impressionable, you know. I just picked the side that I thought would get all the killing done faster. That would let us move on." She scrunched her nose up in the mirror. "Terrible logic, right?"

None of us said anything. I already knew this, of course. But it was different when you could hear the awkwardness in the air.

"Anyone, once New York went to sleep, and everything started to happen, I was kind of in shock, you know?" She made a left and dodged an angry little Bug zipping by. "I ditched. Helped out here and there on Percy's side, when I could. I met Nico there, right? The only not suspicious one." She sighed.

"You're a traitor," Tess said, unthinkingly.

Catherine laughed. "Yeah. I am. The worst kind." She pulled up in front of a big white building, and there was the deafening zoom of a plane zipping overhead. "Here we are." She unbuckled her seatbelt and pulled on the North Face she had grabbed from under the passengers seat, getting out of the car. "I'll make sure you're off safely before I go back and face my dad's wrath," she said. Her boots clunked on the asphalt. The keys went into her pocket, and I got out to follow her. Aven was out next, and Tess hesitated, like she wasn't sure she wanted to follow. But she did. I guess that's all that matters.

"You know," I said, falling behind to walk beside her as Aven pranced to the front next to Catherine. "You are extremely judgmental."

"I don't like traitors, is that so wrong?" she scowled, hefting her backpack (that she had retrieved from the trunk) further up on her shoulder.

"Would you have thought more of her if she just stayed on the wrong side?"

"She wouldn't have had to betray her friends."

"Catherine didn't have any friends," I pointed out. "Monsters aren't really good company."

Tess opened her mouth to say something that would probably make her case, because she's a daughter of Athena and they do annoying things like that, but Aven had turned around and was motioning for the two of us to hurry up. "He should be here by now," she said, peering up at the digital clock stuck on the wall.

Catherine walked over to one of the women at the big desk in the center of the airport, elbowing through men in suits and a group of high schoolers around our age. "Excuse me?"

"Hello! How may I help you?" she asked, her smile stretched thin and painted bright red.

"We're looking for some guy names Kashton," Catherine told her. "Kashton..." she started to add when the lady looked at her incredulously, before Aven whispered something in her ear. "Willingham! We're looking a young man by the name of Kashton Arthur Willingham."

"One of _the _Willinghams?" The woman at the desk straightened.

Catherine grinned. "Indeed," she said. "Is he here yet? He was supposed to come in sometime around now, but if he isn't, we can just wait."

"You don't know the Willinghams," accused the woman.

"I do!" piped Aven.

"Do not."

"Do, too."

I sighed. Like life wasn't hard enough. Aven found a friend.

**Wish me luck on getting...un-grounded...!**

**YAY!**

**(PS, Callie, if you're reading this [which you'd better be] tell your inbox I'm sorry it feels all empty inside.)  
**


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